Boneyard Beach - Bull Island (Charleston County, South Carolina)

While spending some time on Bull Island, off the coast of Charleston, SC, the guided group I was with decided to explore Boneyard Beach on the northeastern side of the island. I visited this area a couple of years ago on my previous trip to this island and found it to be incredibly scenic and interesting.

As the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean travel south, they have been eroding the small barrier island over the centuries. As sand is pulled away from the beach, the salt water intrudes further and further inland. The area that is now beach, was once a maritime forest, full of live oaks and a few other deciduous trees. Those trees don't do well with salt water though and slowly died from exposure to it. Their root systems became more and more exposed as the sand and dirt was pulled away. All the while, the bark was removed by the wind and the trunk underneath was bleached white by the pounding sunrays. Soon, gravity or wind robbed the dying or dead tree of it's vertical existence and it found itself laying on it's side in the sand with the ocean waves pounding on it's remains. 

Walking among these tree corpses, one is reminded of what a whale graveyard might look like. I think this is mostly due to the size and white color of the tree's remains, but I suspect his is partially where the name came from. Dozens, if not hundreds of these trees litter the beach along a section a mile or so long. It's a stunning visual.

Among the trees, we also stumble across the remnants of a old wooden ship. Just the keel and a few support beams remain buried in the sand. I examine the large nails imbedded in the rotting wood for some idea of age and speculate that they were blacksmith made, meaning it was likely pre-industrial era - eighteenth or nineteenth century, I would guess.

Traveling further up the beach, I finally reach a spot where water is flowing from the island back into the sea. The breach is deeper and wider than I'm comfortable crossing and so, I decide to turn back and return to the group. This is an amazing place though and worth a visit if you're on the island.