Welcome to the Winyah Bay Heritage Festival

WELCOME

Welcome to the Winyah Bay Heritage Festival. Now in its sixth year, this year’s festival brings lots of excitement. We are proud of our slogans and this year’s is “Pluff Mud: Where life is slow and oysters grow.” It is important to point out that life isn’t really slow around pluff mud, but the lifestyle lived by many in the lowcountry is slow. Some of you may be asking why we are so obsessed with Winyah Bay and pluff mud. To put it simply, it’s in our veins. This year, the festival will take place March 2 and 3 at the Bobby Alford Recreation Center.

The Winyah Bay Heritage Festival is rooted in history, tradition and recreation. We focus so much on the hunting aspect because ducks, deer and doves, to name a few, are the targets of the land that put food on the table and give us an ability to build bonds that can be built no other way. However, there are so many things we seek in our ecologically rich waters that provide the same.

Oysters are a bivalve loved by all southerners. Those that don’t like them are confused. Many will tell you that the best oysters in the world come from the waters of North Inlet. Lois Massey, social secretary to the Baruchs at Hobcaw Barony, once said that she prepared oysters on the half shell for as many as 24 people. Bivalves were eaten by slaves, their descendants, locals and the northerners that made defunct South Carolina plantations their second home. To truly appreciate an oyster everyone needs to harvest them once on their own.

The featured artist this year is Lee Arthur, a native of McClellanville. Most of you will remember his large alligator made of wood a few years ago. This year, Lee has carved an Atlantic Sturgeon that will be auctioned. Sturgeons don’t have a whole lot to do with oysters or life being slow, but they might be considered more of a tradition than ducks. The Atlantic Sturgeon was harvested for years as they produce the best caviar, but due to over fishing, they can no longer be harvested for their prized black eggs. This large, prehistoric, alligator looking fish swims in Winyah Bay and is often seen jumping, creating a huge splash, not unlike a hooked tarpon.

Sturgeon fishing was a sport and a business and the caviar they produced was shipped all over the world. While we can no longer harvest the fish due to Department of Natural Resources regulations, so many locals remember what a large part the fish played in Georgetown history.
To help visitors understand what the festival is all about, great events are lined up for young and old. The Palmetto Dock dogs are back to show the agility of dogs that are part of our extended family. The Department of Natural Resources is providing their fishing simulator to test your skills with a line and also their shooting range to see if your aim is what it used to be. Brad Jones has been keeping his snakes ready for his “Snakes in Our Own Backyard” lecture, sure to please kids and those grownups that just aren’t so sure. The Youth Calling Clinic and Contest will allow your boy or girl to prove their worthiness on their first duck hunt. If they aren’t quite ready, we have fish and dogs they will be happy to paint. Mr. John Tanner takes us on, ”An Imaginary Turkey Hunt” and we will be treated to a lecture about the “Story of the Sturgeon” given by a DNR representative.  If you need one more event to grab your attention, the Center for the Birds of Prey will be on hand with live birds and will answer all of your avian questions.

And please don’t forget the exhibitors. Without them, we have no festival. Many of them travel from far away and we want to make it worth their while.
All proceeds from ticket sales and sponsors benefit the Georgetown County Historical Society, which in turn supports the Georgetown County Museum, a 501 c3 entity.

In addition to festival activities, many museums and tours in the area are available to further your knowledge of this special place. Come visit, enjoy the festival and just when you think life is slow, a sturgeon might launch out of the bay.

This year's festival celebrates the Atlantic Sturgeon.

"The sturgeon family is among the most primitive of the bony fishes. The shortnose sturgeon shares the same general external morphology of all sturgeon. The body surface contains five rows of bony plates or "scutes." Sturgeon are typically large, long-lived fish that inhabit a great diversity of riverine habitat. Sturgeon are found from the fast-moving freshwater riverine environment downstream and, for some species, into the offshore marine environment of the continental shelf." (Source: NOAA Fisheries, Office of Protected Resources)

Winyah Bay Entrance and Sampit River Tide Predictions (2013) !  

The service of the NOAA Tides & Currents website is not be available after the 2011 calendar year.
Tide predictions for 2012 and future dates are now available from the NOAA Tide Predictions service.
This new service allows tide predictions to be generated for up to 2 years in advance, provides a graphical
display as well as tabular listing of the predicted tides and has options for downloading or printing, and a number of other features.

The Winyah Bay Heritage Festival returns to Georgetown March 2 - 3, 2013.

The Festival is designed to celebrate the rich history of the Winyah Bay area, with an emphasis on conservation, preservation, art, hunting, fishing, decoy carving and other unique traditions.

It unites wildlife artists, a variety of unique exhibitors, outdoor lovers of all sorts and collectors from across the nation. The festival takes place in various locations throughout Georgetown County, and proceeds benefit the Georgetown County Historical Society and the Georgetown County Museum.

Frequently Asked Questions

Winyah Bay's Rich History

Winyah Bay comprises the geographic region now known as Georgetown, South Carolina. From the first inhabitants, the Indians, hunting and fishing has always been a way of life. In 1526, Spaniards made the first recorded North American expedition to Winyah Bay, and the indigenous fauna of waterfowl, turkey, deer, fish and shellfish provided the basics to survive.

The 525,000-acre Winyah Bay area covers the lower drainage of the Black, Great Pee Dee, Little Pee Dee, Sampit and Waccamaw rivers and their confluence into Winyah Bay itself. Together, these waterways form the third largest estuarine watershed on the East Coast.

Rice has been cultivated here for centuries, and the wetlands are a regionally significant habitat for waterfowl, colonial water birds and nesting ospreys. Upland tracts support endangered red-cockaded woodpecker colonies. Many other threatened or endangered species can be found throughout Winyah Bay, including bald eagles, short-nosed sturgeon, loggerhead sea turtles, peregrine falcons, least terns, piping plovers, and wood storks. At any time of year, you will see schools of dolphin and large alligators swimming the area waters.

In 1732, when the seaport community of Georgetown was established, the Winyah Bay region had already begun to embrace the rich traditions of its diverse residents. Native American, European and African cultures mixed to form a rich blend of art, architecture and accents. In these early years, hunting and fishing provided much of the food and its importance was well understood.

In the early 1900s, affluent northerners flocked here to hunt and fish with local sportsmen and landowners. Their quarry varied from ducks, deer, quail and hogs to the fish found in our rivers, creeks and Winyah Bay itself. Out of this came a fine Southern Sporting Heritage. Hunting, fishing, sporting art, dogs, decoys and firearms are part of the landscape. This in turn, spawned many of the region’s great writers and artists. It is a heritage that continues to this day.