The Kiawah Conservancy Legacy Society
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By Peggy Barnes, Trustee and Advancement Committee Chairman
o you remember the first time you came to Kiawah Island? How you felt when you drove
through the shading canopy of huge, ancient oak trees, crossed the bridge over the Kiawah
River and then saw the sign for Kiawah Island?
I do. It was 1980, and we were driving from our home in Charlotte with my 2-year old
daughter strapped in her car seat in the back. When we passed through the first gate, I could not believe my eyes. I
had grown up spending my entire childhood relishing long, lazy summers at our house north of Myrtle Beach, but
I had never seen any part of South Carolina that looked like Kiawah.
The huge oaks trees draping moss, the thick understory vegetation, marshes with the ebb and flow of tides,
sticky pluff mud, deer peeking out from behind palm trees, bobcats lolling around the golf course at dusk, and so
many wonderful species of birds were mesmerizing. It was a different world. I knew then that I had found a place
that I hoped to call home one day.
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