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We Call It "The Waterway"


 We call it “the waterway”

Is the Intra-coastal Waterway (ICW) the great divide in Horry County?  


The ICW is a 3,000-mile water-way corridor from Maine to Texas to move goods, commodities, and military assets.


The east-coast portion was conceived in the early 1800’s to connect natural inland waterways with man-made portions for safe and secure shipping along the Atlantic coast but not in the open sea.  The man-made portion in Horry County, which is the longest and one of the last links of the ICW, connects 22 miles from Little River Inlet to Enterprise Landing at the southern portion of the Waccamaw River just south of the Socastee swing bridge. Built in the mid-1930’s as a part of President Roosevelt’s public works programs, many describe it as one of the most important infrastructure projects ever in Horry County and claim that it drained about 15,000 acres of low-lying wet areas for farming and future development.  


Sounds great, right!  Well, the folks in the greater Conway area argued a better and less expensive approach was to dig a 7-mile canal from Little River to the Waccamaw River and dredging the Waccamaw making it navigable for larger watercraft which would have benefitted the Conway area economically.


That’ when divide began between the west side of the waterway and the east side of the waterway and we continue to see it today as a divider and separator of our communities economically, socially, and politically.

 

Until Next Time,

Jimmy Crack Corn: I Don’t Care

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