Two Big Changes to Sullivan's Island in 2026
August 13, 2026
August 13, 2026
Generations of island kids have slid down the dirt hill behind Stith Park on cardboard, garbage bags, whatever was on hand. The paths are worn smooth from decades of that particular tradition, and most people who grew up here can tell you which side of the Hill sledded faster. For most of that time, the mound itself was just topography, a lump of earth with an old military past nobody thought much about day to day.
This year it stopped being just a hill. If you have walked or driven past Stith Park since early summer, you have probably noticed a new wooden structure rising near the top, visible from Middle Street. That is not a permanent addition to the island's skyline. It was never meant to be one. And it turns out to be only half the story of what actually changed here in 2026. The other half is happening a few blocks away, on a dinner plate.
The hill has a name most residents already know: it was Battery Capron, an Army mortar battery built in 1898 to help defend Charleston Harbor. Back in 2016, the Town Council was already talking about doing something with it. That year, the Post and Courier reported on early proposals for the mound that included an in-ground slide, a walking trail at the top, and historical markers, floated by a local park foundation as part of a broader Stith Park improvement plan. Nothing came of it. Ten years passed with the hill unchanged, still just a place for sliding and generations of muscle memory.
What finally got something built there was not a decade of town planning. It was America's 250th anniversary. The Battle of Sullivan's Island, fought on June 28, 1776, is the reason South Carolina calls itself the Palmetto State, and this year's Carolina Day marked the 250th anniversary of that fight. A regional commission called SC250 Charleston wanted a way to mark it locally, and after considering several sites, the Town Council approved Battery Capron as the location. The vote was 6-1 on February 17, 2026, and the arrangement was notable for who was paying: the fort replica itself would be built, maintained, and eventually removed entirely at SC250 Charleston's expense, with the town's own contribution estimated at roughly $20,600, mostly for infrastructure like running conduit to the top of the mound, according to reporting from Island Eye News.
Mayor Pat O'Neil was candid about why the town said yes to hosting a national commemoration on a hill it hadn't touched in a decade.
"There's no denying there's going to be more people coming here in the next two or three years."
That is the trade residents actually made. Not a park upgrade the town funded and controls indefinitely, but a temporary exhibit, built with someone else's budget, in exchange for a predictable bump in visitors during the semiquincentennial years.
The structure itself is a partial replica of the original 1776 palmetto log fort, a cross-section built to show the scale of the fortification that famously absorbed cannonballs from the British fleet rather than splintering. The Town's own description is direct about the design choice: it uses modern materials shaped to look like the 1776 original, which is cheaper and safer to build and, just as important, easier to take down when the anniversary window closes. That is the key detail. This was never presented as a permanent monument. It is dressed like history but built like a stage set, and everyone involved has been upfront about that from the start.
Access is free, by way of a paved walking path next to Town Hall on Middle Street, with two ADA parking spots at the top of the hill for anyone who needs closer access to the exhibit itself. If you are driving over rather than walking or biking, the town points visitors to parking along Middle Street itself or at Battery Thompson, behind the Sullivan's Island Post Office.
The exhibit was the physical anchor for a summer of programming built around the anniversary. Carolina Day itself, on June 27 and 28, brought a signature commemoration to Fort Moultrie National Historical Park, with cannon and musket demonstrations, a raising of the Moultrie Flag, and a two-line shuttle system running visitors in from Mount Pleasant Town Hall and Lucy Beckham to manage the crowd the town knew was coming. The season closed out on July 4 with the return of the Independence Day fireworks show at Stith Park, live music from the Shem Creek Boogie Band starting at 6 p.m., fireworks a little after 9. Both of those events are behind us now. The fort replica is the piece that is still standing, and it is expected to remain accessible into late 2027 before it comes down, roughly 18 months from its unveiling this spring, per the town's own timeline.
If the mound is the island's most visible change this year, the one locals have actually been tasting is a few doors down. Sullivan's Fish Camp, the seafood restaurant at 2019 Middle Street, brought on chef Jason Stanhope as chef and partner alongside longtime owner Jeremy Graves starting in the spring of 2025. Stanhope's résumé is not a small one for a beach town kitchen: he spent 15 years at FIG in downtown Charleston, earning the James Beard Foundation's Best Chef Southeast award in 2015, and most recently ran the kitchen at Lowland before this move.
What makes the transition worth noting for anyone who already eats there regularly is how deliberately slow it has been. Rather than relaunching with a new name and a clean slate, Stanhope described the goal as building on what was already there, gradually introducing changes while the restaurant continued operating as usual. Ben Towill and Kate Towill, who had been behind reviving Sullivan's Fish Camp in its current form, called it "a labor of love for Kate and I" in the announcement, framing the handoff as a continuation rather than a reinvention.
By early 2026, the reworked menu was fully in place, built around relationships Stanhope already had with Lowcountry purveyors including Abundant Seafood, Kindlewood Farms, Tarvin Seafood, and Lowcountry Shellfish. The current dinner menu runs from a Warm Buttered Lobster Roll at $39 to a Whole Crispy Flounder at $48 and a Steak Frites built on a Brasstown Butcher's ribeye at $62, alongside more casual staples like a Double Cheeseburger at $24 and a Lowcountry Boil at $36. Even the smallest details got the same gradual, respectful treatment: the restaurant's hush puppies were downsized from golf-ball size to what the menu now calls "hush puppy tots," made with a stoneground heirloom cornmeal sourced from Marsh Hen Mill on nearby Edisto Island. Stanhope has described the goal as landing somewhere between the shed-style fish camps the concept is named for and a kitchen with real technique behind it, something closer to a neighborhood seafood joint than a fine dining room in board shorts.
Put the two stories side by side and a pattern shows up that says something real about how this island handles change. Sullivan's Island did not tear anything down this year. It did not fast-track a decade of stalled park plans into permanent new infrastructure, and it did not let an outside chef relaunch a beloved restaurant under a new banner. What it did instead, twice, was accept a carefully bounded version of change: a fort that arrives with a removal date already attached, and a menu evolving one dish at a time inside a kitchen that kept its name, its ownership structure, and its regulars.
If you already live here, both of these are worth seeing and tasting before they settle into the island's normal rhythm, or in the fort's case, before they are gone. The hill behind Stith Park will not look like this again after 2027. The Fish Camp's new menu, on the other hand, seems built to stay exactly as long as the seafood holds up, which on this island has generally meant a long time.
If you are ever curious what any of this means for the value of your own place on the island, whether it is a Middle Street cottage or something further down toward Breach Inlet, Handsome Properties offers a free home valuation whenever you want a second opinion, no anniversary required.
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