North Myrtle Beach didn't exist as a single city until 1968. Before that, Cherry Grove, Ocean Drive, Crescent Beach, and Windy Hill were four separate beach towns sitting side by side along the same stretch of coast, each with its own identity and its own local government.
That merger history isn't just trivia. Car insurance in North Myrtle Beach still has to account for a city that grew up as a patchwork of vacation communities rather than one planned municipality, and that patchwork shows up in today's premiums.
Four Towns, One City, One Set of Rates
1967 legislation and a local referendum combined Cherry Grove, Ocean Drive, Crescent Beach, and Windy Hill into North Myrtle Beach in 1968. Atlantic Beach, a historically Black resort community nearby, was invited to join and chose to stay independent instead.
Each of those original neighborhoods still has its own personality — Ocean Drive is where the shag dance took root, Cherry Grove leans quieter and more residential — and a car garaged in one versus another can see small differences in a quote depending on local flood exposure and traffic density.
A City Built Around Homes Nobody Lives in Full-Time
Across the greater Myrtle Beach metro area, which includes North Myrtle Beach, close to 47% of approved home mortgages in recent years went toward second homes rather than primary residences. That's an unusually high share for a metro area of this size, and it tracks with a coastline where vacation ownership is the norm, not the exception.
A car that sits in a driveway for weeks or months between visits still needs comprehensive coverage against theft, storm damage, and the general wear of sitting outside near salt air. Insurers pricing policies in a town this heavy on seasonal property are factoring in a different usage pattern than they would for a city full of daily commuters.
What North Myrtle Beach Drivers Are Required to Carry
South Carolina sets the same 25/50/25 liability floor statewide: $25,000 in bodily injury coverage per person, $50,000 per accident, and $25,000 in property damage. A North Myrtle Beach driver carries the identical minimum as someone in Columbia or Greenville.
Uninsured motorist coverage at those same 25/50 limits is bundled into every policy sold in the state, since South Carolina is a tort state and skips a PIP mandate entirely. Underinsured motorist coverage is offered but optional, and drivers can decline it in writing.
So Close to North Carolina, Still a South Carolina Policy
North Myrtle Beach sits just a few miles from Little River and the North Carolina line near Calabash. Drivers sometimes wonder whether that proximity changes anything about their coverage. It doesn't.
A car registered and garaged in North Myrtle Beach carries South Carolina's 25/50/25 minimums and tort-based fault rules no matter how close the driveway sits to the state line. What does change the quote is the usual set of local factors — ZIP code, driving record, and whether the car spends most of the year parked at a vacation address or a full-time one.
A city stitched together from four older beach towns, with housing stock still leaning heavily toward second homes, is reason enough to compare more than one quote rather than assume a single number applies evenly across North Myrtle Beach.