I've lived in Port Royal since 1996.

My neighbors greeted me.

They all came out in a cul de sac and they had cookies and cakes and they introduced themselves to me and our kids grew up together.

And that was my welcome to Port Royal.

Hi, my name is Kayla.

I'm the owner of Amidst the Orders for a retail store in Port Royal, South Carolina.

And we sell mostly handmade goods, a lot of which we make ourselves.

And we love Port Royal.

It's different.

It's a beautiful little town.

It's filled with magic.

I would say Port Royal has always felt like home because of the people, the community and just the feeling, the small town feeling you get here.

I come from a small town.

I come from a town of 1500 people.

So the small town part of it when I came here was what attracted me.

And I could walk to the town hall.

And then you can feel like you're part of the town.

So mental, moral, physical strength, you need to show me that right now we pride ourselves also in Port Royal because we house two of the three military installations here in Beaufort County.

We have the United States Naval Hospital, and we have Parris Island, a marine training depot that's all housed, are located right here in Port Royal.

So we pride ourselves with our military town.

So the families come on Wednesday and then on Thursday they get to see their son or daughter before they graduate.

And the funny thing is, when we've got these people staying in homes around us is to ask them on Thursday after they've seen their child for the first time.

So what's it like?

And of course they go crazy.

They can't believe their son or daughter has changed so much.

They couldn't do it in 18 years, but their Marine Corps did it in 30 weeks.

And that that really makes me proud.

I tell people, you know, there are places in South Carolina that make a million car tires a day or something.

I think we make 20,000 Marines.

Nobody else can say that.

It's a sense of community here that you don't really find in other towns these days, especially one that's filled with so much vegetation and so many views around every turn.

The wildlife is incredible.

You can go right down the road and see a rookery.

We have the Cypress wetlands, which is a wetlands area there where the people come and see various species of birds and and alligators and frogs, turtles, you name it.

There's out there we have a weekly farmer's market which is held at the Naval Heritage Park directly in front of the US Naval Hospital.

We pride ourselves also in lots of the festivals, though, because we in Port Royal, we own the streets.

The streets are not owned by the South Carolina Department of Transportation.

So we have the the luxury of shutting our streets down.

When we have festivals, we have a spring series and a fall series that's called Music on Paris Avenue.

The community comes out, they get in the streets and they dance.

Recently, we have the Food Truck Festival, where we had over 13 vendors from across the state and Georgia and then also we had the Softshell Crab Festival, which is hosted annually by the historic Port Royal Foundation.

We had thousands of people to come out and enjoy the Softshell Crab Festival for.

I mean, the town was established in 1874 at the end of the Civil War.

It was during Reconstruction and that was when the railroad was finished at that time.

Then we started bringing coal and the harbor was filled up at that time with ships that were exporting stuff to Europe particularly.

And so the town was based around that.

And because of that and early in 1893, when the hurricane hit, it wiped out all it wiped out the phosphate business, wiped out cotton, indigo.

And so it made things here really tough.

And Port Royal slow to come back.

And then when the Navy built the Navy base and the big dry dock, then everything became really busy.

So we worked on what we did well until the Navy moved up to Charleston and in 1910, 11, something like that.

And then the Marine Corps came and things started changing with Parris Island.

And it's been pretty much a Parris Island place ever since.

And I think that's the character of the town right now.

This is what that brings economically and also in population.

It feels like like I said, I lived in Charleston and you just didn't you didn't get that.

It was filled with tourists and people who moved from other places, but no one really knew each other's names.

Here in Port Royal.

I feel like everyone knows your name.

It is a small town, so you know, everyone knows everyone, but it's in the best way, in the best sense.

A lot of the neighbors have golf carts and of course, they meet out in the public and down at the Sands Beach or in a park and just get to know each other.

I love a town where the neighbors open their doors, are welcoming to each other, and we know each other.

We sit on the front porch and we talk to each other.

I think the best way to describe it is it's it's like your hometown.

And I tell people, I mean, here you can get a barbershop, an ice cream and pizza.

You can get anything here walking around.

So that part of it's great.

And I think that does attract a lot of people and they're surprised.

When we first started having festivals here, I would talk to people on the street and they would say, Wow, this place is nuts.

So yeah, I mean, it's been here all along, but you have to come to each softshell crab to see what it really looks like.

We welcome you to experience the magic of Port Royal.

We love to see you here in Port Royal.

Welcome to Port Royal.

Small town charm, cool coastal and far from ordinary.

This is our town.

This is our town.

This is our town.