Discover Nature at Huntington Beach State Park

Huntington Beach State Park offers a wide variety of nature and history educational opportunities to its visitors. Its diverse habitats include beach, sand dunes, salt marsh, freshwater marsh, brackish marsh, maritime forest, rock jetty and maritime grasslands. Many of these habitats exist in close proximity to each other, leading to an exceptional abundance of wildlife habitat. Most of these habitats are also easily accessible to the public for nature study and wildlife viewing. in fact, Huntington Beach is considered by many birders to be the best site for bird watching in South Carolina.

The park's Education Center contains an exhibit hall, featuring a touch tank, several aquariums, a number of live animal exhibits (including a baby alligator), and a variety of interactive exhibits. The Education Center also contains a classroom with a number of compound and dissecting microscopes and audio-visual equipment, a Wet Lab with a dozen aquariums and variety of living and preserved marine organisms, and a new Eco Lab with a plankton farm and biotope aquariums representing the different wetland habitats of the park.

Huntington Beach is also the site of the historic “Atalaya” castle. The former winter home and studio of noted American sculptress, Anna Hyatt Huntington, and her husband, Archer Milton Huntington, Atalaya is also listed as a National Historic Landmark..

Park Interpreter Led Programs:

Environmental Detectives

Program Activities

The students will be introduced to the following environments: salt marsh, brackish water pond, maritime forest, dune and ocean.

Grade Level: 4
Length of Time: 2 hours
Science Standards: 4-2.1, 4-2.2 and 4-2.6
Setting: coastal park

Students will participate in a field study to Huntington Beach State Park to explore Atalaya, the historic winter home of philanthropist Archer Huntington and his sculptress wife, Anna Hyatt Huntington. The Huntingtons were a powerful force on the local community during the Great Depression, becoming the largest employers in Georgetown County during this time period. They also used the construction of Atalaya and Brook green Gardens as a training ground for local, unskilled laborers to provide them with the tools for successful occupations in the future.

Students will participate in a "treasure" hunt through Atalaya, moving through different stations where they will learn about the Great Depression and the New Deal, as well as about the Huntingtons and Atalaya.

Grade Level: 5
Length of Time: 2 hours
Social Studies Standards: 5-4, Indicators: 5-4.2 and 5-4.3
Language Arts Standards: 5-C1.5, 5-C1.8 and 5-C1.12
Setting: coastal park

Huntington Beach State Park offers a unique setting for a field study on ecosystems. Through the hands-on use of equipment used by scientists, such as: sampling dredges, quadrats, core samplers, and water quality test kits, students will investigate the biotic and abiotic factors in the salt marsh ecosystem. They will also examine how these factors effect populations of animals like shorebirds.

Grade Level: 5
Length of Time: 1.5 hours
Science Standards: 5-2, Indicators: 5-2.2 through 5-2.5
Setting: coastal park

Fiddling with Estimating Populations introduces 7th grade students to one of the largest populations of animals in the salt marsh, the fiddler crab. Using one of the tools used by ecologists, they will use quadrats to count the number of fiddler crabs in several small sections of the marsh. Afterwards, the students will use graphing to share their results with their classmates and use their math skills to find an average and extrapolate a total population of fiddler crabs in their study area. Along the way, students will explore the niche that fiddler crabs fill in their habitat and how they fit into the food web of the salt marsh.

Grade Level: 7
Length of Time: 2 hours
Science Standards: Science 7-4.1 and 7-4.3; Math III. E., V. B., and VI. D.
Setting: coastal park