Palmetto Dunes - Hilton Head Island, SC

Palmetto Dunes is a premier Hilton Head golf resort and Hilton Head Island's family destination of choice forbeach fun, golf, tennis, and adventure!

Palmetto Dunes offers three distinctively different layouts by legendary golf designers. Consider the Robert Trent Jones Oceanfront Course, Arthur Hills or George Fazio courses - all rated an outstanding 4 stars plus by Fodor's Golf Digest Places to Play. Hilton Head SC golf packages are available.

Tennis Magazine has ranked us among "The 50 Greatest U.S. Tennis Resorts" since 1975 and Palmetto Dunes Tennis was also recently ranked #5 in the "World's Top 100 Tennis Resorts and Camps" by Tennis Resorts Online.

Palmetto Dunes Outfitters offers kayaks, canoes, bikes, fishing rods and reels, and beach gear. Take a nature tour, charter a boat, or experience a dolphin encounter with the whole family.

For waterfront shopping and dining there's no comparison to Shelter Cove Harbour's Mediterranean atmosphere and waterfront setting. Come to Palmetto Dunes and see why we think it's the best resort Hilton Head SC has to offer.

Combine a world-class vacation resort with private residences, and Hilton Head Island's Palmetto Dunes emerges. Developed in 1967, this plantation borders the Atlantic Ocean and is located directly across from Shelter Cove Harbour. Palmetto Dunes contains two privately gated neighborhoods, the Leamington community and the Mariner's section, as well as luxury resorts by Marriott, Hilton, and Disney. Here you will also find the island’s deepest yacht basin at Shelter Cove, three miles of beaches, an 11-mile lagoon system, approximately six miles of bike paths, three golf courses, and plenty of tennis courts. The Palmetto Dunes community has even been recognized by Forbes magazine as one of the Top Eleven Family Resorts!

Palmetto Dunes: History

The Hilton Head Agricultural Company owned the only land left on Hilton Head not already owned by Hack, Fraser, or McIntosh, 1,900 acres of hunting land. The tract finally sold to the Palmetto Dunes Corporation (outbidding Fraser) in 1967 for $1,000 per acre. The Palmetto Dunes community was intended to outshine any previous island projects as a much more intense vacation experience. While other plantations were either major resort destinations or private residential areas, Palmetto Dunes incorporated both ideas by building a second internal gate dividing its private residential sector from the ritzy resort areas. Later, in 1971, Phipps Land Company and Trans International Properties Corporation of New York together purchased and incorporated the resort. (PLC had earned a successful reputation as the first major financial provider for Sea Pines Plantation). Palmetto Dunes was then sold to Greenwood Development Corporation (formed in 1978 by Jim Self of Greenwood Mills) in 1979, after which ownership and management of the community has finally transferred to the Palmetto Dunes Property Owners Association on January 1, 2006. The final change occurred after an extremely long lawsuit, based on the POA’s claim that GDC refused to explain its assessment spending since 1979. In the settlement, Greenwood Development Corporation agreed to transfer both ownership and management by 2011 (GDC acquiesced early).