Myrtle Grove Plantation

THE MYRTLE BEACH AREA offers its residents and visitors a huge and varied assortment of dining, entertainment, sports and recreational opportunities.

Nearly 2,000 full-service restaurants adorn the glitzy Grand Strand, surrounding an array of live entertainment venues that feature music, dance, comedy and dinner shows covering the spectrum of night life, ranging from the nostalgia of Elvis impersonators to the thrilling horsemanship of Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede Dinner and Show.

Beautiful beaches and the endless Atlantic Ocean also are a big draw, of course, and it’s difficult to find a better place to live or visit if you spend any time at all playing golf. The Strand boasts more than 100 championship-level courses, each with its own unique personality. And with water everywhere and beautiful weather most of the time, water sports are huge, from boating to skiing to kayaking to canoeing.

Until recently, however, no form of entertainment could claim to be unique on the Grand Strand; no community could offer an amenity unavailable elsewhere on the Carolina coast. All that changed when development got underway at Myrtle Grove Plantation.

Not far from the ubiquitous restaurants and shopping malls, ever-growing entertainment venues and never-ending string of golf courses that define Myrtle Beach, Myrtle Grove Plantation offers its residents and visitors a unique experience: the opportunity to participate in outdoor shooting sports.

Despite its rural setting in Longs, South Carolina, just south of the North Carolina border, Myrtle Grove is only a 15-minute drive from the Atlantic Ocean and just 25 minutes from the neon of downtown Myrtle Beach. Eventually, 560 home sites will be developed in five phases on the 360-acre site.

Meanwhile, residents and visitors who venture north from the crowded coast will be introduced to the fast-growing sport of clay target shooting. The Myrtle Grove Gun Club offers a variety of shooting games, including skeet, trap and sporting clays, and specializes in customizing events for companies and other groups.

It’s no surprise that Myrtle Grove Plantation’s developer, John Stillwagon of Terra Properties, is himself a championship trap shooter. He launched his Myrtle Beach area real estate career with Country Manor in 1985, and, since then, has helped develop dozens of residential communities and other properties.

Myrtle Grove Plantation is his first neighborhood featuring a nearby outdoor shooting range, however.