29566 · Horry County
Little River
A working fishing village at the North Carolina line, older than the Grand Strand around it — and two hundred thousand cheaper than the beach towns.
Little River is unincorporated, sits on the Intracoastal Waterway right at the North Carolina line, and is older than almost everything around it — British colonists were here before 1734, and the Bessent family has lived here since about 1766. The waterfront is still a row of seafood houses under three-hundred-year-old oaks, with charter boats tied up behind them. It has grown fast — 31% in the 2010s alone, to 11,711 — and it skews older than anywhere else on this list, with 42% of residents over 65.
Where you’ll eat
- The Parson’s Table — in the 1885 first Little River Methodist Church, which held services until 1952 and became a restaurant in 1978. The front doors are local cypress, over 150 years old.
- Hurricane Juel’s — family owned since 1945, on the waterway under 300-year-old oaks, still serving a stuffed flounder recipe that is 75 years old.
- Blue Drum Waterfront — opened 2023 and promptly took four Post and Courier “Grand Strand’s Greatest” awards, including Best Overall and Best Seafood.
- Crab Catchers — family-owned since 1996 on the waterfront. Motto: “not fancy, just fresh.” No reservations.
- Mako’s on the Water — coastal dining with a tiki bar built out over the water.
- Twelve 33 Distillery — grain-to-glass, Prohibition-themed, and the staff are called Spirit Guides. Closed Sundays.
- Coop’s General Store — a historic building with an old-fashioned ice cream fountain in it.
- Calabash, five minutes north — the North Carolina town that gave its name to a style of fried seafood. Dockside dates to 1955 and Captain Nance’s to 1975.
What you’ll do here
- Two festivals the whole coast comes to — the World Famous Blue Crab Festival on the waterfront the weekend after Mother’s Day, now in its forties, and ShrimpFest under the live oaks in October.
- Vereen Memorial Historical Gardens — 115 acres of forest and marsh, three miles of trails and boardwalk, a family cemetery with Revolutionary War graves and a preserved stretch of the colonial Kings Highway. Free.
- Golf with some history — Eagle Nest, a 1971 Gene Hamm design, plays as the longest course in South Carolina at 8,168 yards from the back. Glen Dornoch runs five holes along the Intracoastal among centuries-old oaks.
- The casino boats — South Carolina’s only ones, sailing into federal waters from here. They pay the county ten dollars a head, which has funded about $15.6 million of firefighters and paramedics.
- Barefoot Landing — ten minutes down the road, with the Alabama Theatre and House of Blues.
Where you’d look
Little River is unincorporated, which cuts both ways. There is no town council, no municipal police force and no town tax — everything runs through Horry County. The upside is your tax bill. The downside is that you have far less say in what gets built next door, and the pace here is fast: the population grew 27% in the 2000s and 31% in the 2010s, and the old Heather Glen golf course is now about a thousand houses. The county is spending $745 million widening Highway 90 into Little River precisely because the roads are already overwhelmed, and that construction will be disruptive for years. The market is slow — prices flat to slightly down, homes sitting around 115 days, a Redfin competitiveness score of 13 out of 100. For a buyer that is leverage; for a seller it means pricing honestly from day one. On 55+ communities, be careful: only Rivergate is genuinely age-restricted. Bridgewater, Heather Glen and Cypress Village are age-targeted, which is a different thing legally, and I would want that confirmed in writing before you buy on that basis.
Live from the MLS
What is for sale in Little River right now
Straight from the Coastal Carolinas MLS and updated as listings change. Active listings only — nothing under contract, nothing already sold.