Beaufort South Carolina is located on Port Royal Island, one of the largest Sea Islands along the southeast Atlantic coast of the United States. It is one of only a handful of U.S. towns that has had its entire downtown designated a historic district by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Beaufort was one of the only Southern towns chosen to be occupied by Union troops, rather than destroyed. The story of how this came about is fascinating and even more impressive than the beautiful mansions that were built by the wealthy plantation owners before the Civil War.
