This section of Horry County is part of the ancestral lands of the Waccamaw Indians. By the 1700s the tribe's territory extended roughly from Lake Waccamaw in N.C. to Winyah Bay in Georgetown, S.C., following the course of the Waccamaw River and Little Pee Dee River. A colonial Carolina census in 1715 reported four Waccamaw villages with a total of 610 inhabitants. In 2004 the Wacamaw Indian People of S.C. purchased this site for their tribal headquarters. They became a state-recognized Indian tribe in 2005. The tribe claims historical ties to the Dimery Settlement (3 mi. S), a small community of Native families founded in the early 1800s in Dog Bluff Township. In the 20th century it included churches and a public school for Native children.