Hunting Island State Park is a 5,000-acre barrier island on the South Carolina coast and one of the state’s most visited parks, yet it remains a largely undeveloped Sea Island within the ACE Basin reserve area. Long used as a hunting preserve, it later became a state park in 1935 and was further developed in the 1930s as bridges improved access from Beaufort. Its historic lighthouse, first built in the 1850s and rebuilt after the Civil War, remains a central landmark. The island is valued for beaches, maritime forest, marshes, abundant wildlife, and a landscape continually reshaped by severe erosion.