Mitchelville's Digs Will Now Be Studied Where They Were Found

A large hollowed shell came out of the ground at the building site on Harriet Tubman Way. Researchers think someone used it as a tool thousands of years ago, and that Mitchelville residents used it again, WTOC reported in July. Until now, finds like that shell had no permanent building to stay in at Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park. The building going up over the spot where it was found is meant to change that.

On Wednesday, October 28, at 10:00 a.m., the park will cut the ribbon on its Archaeological Research Facility and Auditorium at 40 Harriet Tubman Way. The Hilton Head Island Chamber of Commerce lists the ceremony from 10:00 to 10:30 a.m. For anyone living along Port Royal Sound, this is the start of something new on the north end. The open field off Beach City Road is becoming a working research campus, and the history found there will be studied and shown right where it came out of the ground.

A Lab Where the Dirt Is

According to WTOC's July 27 report, the Mellon Foundation paid for the building, which is the first permanent structure on the park's campus. It does two jobs. Archaeologists working the site can process what they find without sending it to outside labs. The auditorium seats about 84 people for programs.

Before this, the park's archaeology happened on site but the processing happened somewhere else. Now the work and the place sit side by side. Executive Director Ahmad Ward put it plainly in the same WTOC story:

"It's a big deal for us to have this building on our site."

The park's archaeology page, DIG Mitchelville, lists the ribbon-cutting under its community programs, next to the gallery of finds from the building site.

What the Ground Has Already Given Up

The case for a lab on site comes from what the digging keeps turning up. In its July report, WTOC described three layers of history under the same few acres:

1. A church nobody knew was there. The park put a praise house replica on the site in 2014. Archaeology later confirmed a historic church in that area, and the replica had been built right on top of its footprint.
2. A 4,000-year-old Indigenous imprint below the church. Digging deeper in the same spot turned up the imprint. Researchers believe the people connected to it were the Escamacu and Kusabo First Nations.
3. Finds from several eras at the new building's site. Excavations are producing artifacts from the Mitchelville era and the plantation era, plus colonial-era evidence of enslaved people.

The park is turning that stack of history into an exhibit. A church frontage installation near the construction zone will have benches inscribed with spirituals and hymns. The benches lead to a nook showing the Indigenous imprint next to a six-foot core sample, with replica artifacts set at the depths where the real ones were found. Visitors will see the ground's history from top to bottom in one place.

The state also put in close to $1 million for archaeological research ahead of a planned Interpretive Center. Ward told WTOC that everything excavated will eventually go into that center as teaching tools. The building opening this month is where those finds will be handled before they reach the future galleries.

Why Beach City Road Has Cones on It

If you have driven past the park since late summer, you have seen the other half of this story. The Town of Hilton Head Island's Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park Improvements project says outright that the road and parking work is there to support the new research facility and auditorium.

Construction began in August. The park stays open the whole time, and the Town asks visitors to follow posted traffic controls and construction signs in the work zones. That timing explains the next two months. The building opens in late October, but the loop road and permanent parking are not scheduled to be done until the week before Christmas. Anyone visiting in November or early December should plan on driving through an active work zone.

The Longer Plan Behind the First Building

The research facility is the first piece of a much bigger plan. In August, WTOC laid out Ward's plans for a heritage destination of about 36 acres, guided by four principles: freedom, democracy, citizenship and opportunity.

Three pieces of that plan stand out:

• A two-floor interpreter center. The first floor will cover Mitchelville's history. The second floor will be a rentable event space with views of Port Royal Sound.
• An event lawn of about three-quarters of an acre. Each Mitchelville family was originally given a quarter-acre lot, and the lawn is laid out to show the scale of that land ownership. "We want kids to be able to see what a quarter acre looks like," Ward told the station.
• A replica general store along one of the paths, built to look like the store may have looked during that period.

Ward also told WTOC that about 10 more years of archaeological work is possible at the site, running alongside the construction. So the lab is not a one-time project. It could be the base for about a decade of digging on the edge of Port Royal Sound. A flat-bottom boat built by Frank Kidd, a native islander and boat builder, is already on display at the park. It is a display piece and is not seaworthy.

Pairing a Visit With Fish Haul in the Off-Season

Fish Haul Beach Park is next door at 124 Mitchelville Road, overlooking Port Royal Sound, with restrooms and parking. Like all Town beach parks, it is open daily from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. The Town's beach parking page lists 93 spaces and four ADA spaces at Fish Haul. Another 70 free spaces sit at the Barker Field Expansion at 160 Mitchelville Road. Paid parking for general visitors is $3 an hour on weekdays and $5 on weekends, and it is enforced only from March 1 to September 7. In late October, a morning at Mitchelville followed by an hour at Fish Haul costs nothing to park.

A boardwalk links Fish Haul and Barker Field, and the Barker Field extension ends at an observation deck over the sound. Fall and winter also bring shorebirds to this stretch of the sound. Hilton Head Audubon notes that Piping Plovers winter here from late summer through early spring and Red Knots pass through during fall migration. The group has set up a designated Wildlife Beach Area for quieter feeding and roosting, and the rest of the shoreline stays open. Audubon's October 26 shorebird walk at Fish Haul is already full. For a visit on your own, the Hilton Head Island Visitor & Convention Bureau's birding guide suggests going around high tide, when shorebirds gather to roost, and keeping a respectful distance.

Mitchelville's own site says self-guided visits are available daily and private guided tours are by reservation. Once the ribbon is cut and the loop road is finished in late December, the park will have its first permanent building, an 84-seat auditorium, two new entrances on Beach City Road, and 36 new parking spaces.

If you live near the sound and want to talk about how projects like this shape the north end, Tyler Stone is glad to share what he's watching along Beach City Road. Contact Tyler.