Home Care In Little River, SC

A Food Lion grocery and liquor stores are set to open this week in Little River, offering gifts to the first 100 customers in line.

The store opens Wednesday at 8 a.m. with an extensive product assortment of hand cut meats, in-store cut fruits and grab-to-go food and drink options, according to a news release.

The first 100 customers in line will receive a mystery gift card valued at up to $200, free reusable shopping bags and a custom apron. The store, located at 77 S. Highway 57, Little River, will then be open daily from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. The next-door liquor store will be open Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. until 7 p.m.

“I’m excited to open this new store in Little River and offer our neighbors a wide product assortment at the everyday low prices they expect from Food Lion,” said Chris Cheers, store manager of the new Little River Food Lion. “With the liquor store adjacent to the Little River Food Lion, we will continue to deliver on our commitment to make grocery shopping easy, convenient and affordable for our customers.”

Customers can expect to see a large selection of organic, gluten-free and plant based items to choose from, including Nature’s Promise-brand items, which are Food Lion’s brand made with no artificial flavors, preservatives or synthetic colors, according to a release.

The store will also feature a walk-in produce cooler, a self-service hot wing and Asian food bar.

The location will offer a variety of locally grown produce and products likes Caroline Plantation Grits, Gillespie’s Salted Peanuts and 5C’s Everything Sauce, all produced within 100 miles of the store.

The Little River Food Lion is the fifth store to have a liquor store operating adjacent to a Food Lion grocery store and the fourth in South Carolina, the release states.

The store will also offer self-checkout lanes and the Food Lion To Go grocery pickup service. Online orders may be placed on the Food Lion To Go website or the Food Lion To Go app.

Food Lion has also made a commitment to the Little River area donating $2,500 to two local agencies in Horry County: North Strand Helping Hands and St. Delight Community Outreach.

Both organizations will also regularly collect food from the store to distribute to neighbors in need through Food Lion Feeds, an industry-leading food rescue program that stores food safe for human consumption to local feeding agencies before the food spoils. Food Lion Feeds has donated more than 1 billion meals to neighbors in need since 2014, the release states.

LITTLE RIVER, S.C. (WBTW) — There’s nothing little about what they serve at the Little River Deli.

The portions, the flavors, the menu — all bigger than you might expect. Inside this little building, they do it big.

“We can really do a lot in a small space,” owner Amanda Flowers said. “We got a great crew.”

The day I was at Little River Deli, it was a slow day and the line was still five people deep.

Flowers, who took over the deli in February, said some days the line goes out the door. The deli has been here since 1999, and it’s still the same.

“That’s one thing that I really wanted to keep was just the heart of it and the thing that people have come to love,” Flowers said. When you take over a business, I worked here, so I kind of knew what the place was and what people were here to get, and I never wanted to change that.”

Flowers has worked here for 15 years; her dad’s been here since it opened.

“I love it,” Flowers said. “I went to college and I had a whole ‘nother career. I always worked here in between and weekends and stuff, and at the end of the day I chose this, hands down.”

Little River Deli has a lot on the menu, but they specialize in New York and Italian food. While not much changes, occasionally, something new is added.

“So we’re cooking our own, roasting our own roast beef now, slicing it and serving it on a sub or open face with gravy. It’s something that people are calling in for every single day now,” Flowers said. “So that was my touch that I added.”

While tourists are important to the Grand Strand, this place is important to the locals.

“Honestly, a lot of times we do get some tourists, which is awesome, but consistently it’s locals coming in, and it think it’s really cool,” Flowers said. “A lot of people will say that are finding us, they’ll say, ‘Oh my gosh I drive right past you,’ or ‘you have no idea how many times I’ve driven past and this is my first time in.’ And I think that it’s so cool to know that they’re finding this new place and they always come back.”

And she’s not kidding when she says they come back.

“It’s a lot of hard work. It’s worth it,” Flowers said. “I think it’s satisfying when you see people come in every single day. We have customers that come seven days a week.”

Little River Deli now does catering for any size event. They’re on Highway in, you guessed it, Little River.

HORRY COUNTY, S.C. (WBTW) — The Carolina Long Bay Project is undergoing early-stage surveying and analysis of two leased sites on a future offshore wind turbine project off the coast of Little River.

Duke Energy and Total Energies won a bid in May 2022 to be the lessees of two sites in the Carolina Long Bay area.

Duke Energy said it’s now preparing to put buoys in the water to measure things like wind speed.

“They’ll do a lot of assessments of the bottom habitats for essential fish habitat in the area,” said Paul Gayes, executive director for Coastal Carolina University’s Burroughs and Chapin Center for Marine and Wetland Studies. “They’ll likely cable corridors that are bringing the power in.”

The two leased sites sit about 22 miles off the coast between South Carolina and North Carolina.

According to Duke Energy’s website, the turbines could power nearly 375,000 homes using a total of 1.6 gigawatts of offshore wind.

Gayes said the surveying and analysis they do now will shape the construction and operations of the project.

“Florida gets a lot of hurricanes and Maine gets a lot of nor’easters, we get both,” he said. “And so, the design that goes into these things has to reflect the realities of which they’re going to be put into.”

Gayes said the waters between South and North Carolina are a good place for a wind farm and that it’s been studied for more than a decade.

“We have such a flat, low gradient shelf, you can go way offshore and still be in depths of water you can build easy traditional towers,” he said.

In Virginia, Dominion Energy has two offshore wind turbines already in use. It plans to have more constructed by 2026 to power more than 600,000 homes.

Gayes said regardless, wind energy — both on and offshore, is the future.

“There’s no perfect solution, but all these things can lead to an integrated good solution,” he said.

Duke Energy said the project is still in the planning phase, so it’s still looking into what exact areas would be powered by the turbines.

The project plans to be operational by 2035.

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Adrianna Lawrence is a multimedia journalist at News13. Adrianna is originally from Virginia Beach, Virginia, and joined the News13 team in June 2023 after graduating from Virginia Commonwealth University in May 2023. Keep up with Adrianna on Instagram, Facebook, and X, formerly Twitter. You can also read more of her work, here.

Daily Covid-19 admissions in the Little River County area

About the data

Data is from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hospitalization data is a daily average of Covid-19 patients in hospital service areas that intersect with Little River County, an area which may be larger than Little River County itself.

The number of daily hospital admissions shows how many patients tested positive for Covid in hospitals and is one of the most reliably reported indicators of Covid’s impact on a community.

Total population

Ages 65 and up

Total population

Ages 65 and up

An updated vaccine is recommended for adults and most children. Statewide, 8% of vaccinations did not specify a home county.

Nearby hospitals

Share of I.C.U. beds occupied

About this data Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Notes: The hospitals map shows the average I.C.U. occupancy at nearby hospitals in the most recent week with data reported. The data is self-reported to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by individual hospitals. It excludes counts from hospitals operated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Indian Health Service. Numbers for hospitalized patients are based on inpatient beds and include I.C.U. beds. Hospitalized Covid-19 patients include both confirmed and suspected Covid-19 patients. The C.D.C. stopped reporting data on cases in May 2023.

How trends have changed in Little River County

About this data Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Notes: Weekly county death data prior to Jan. 2021 was not reported by the C.D.C. and is sourced from reporting by The New York Times. Hospitalization data is a weekly average of Covid-19 patients in hospital service areas that intersect with Little River County. Hospitalization numbers early in the pandemic are undercounts due to incomplete reporting by hospitals to the federal government.

Historical trends in Little River County

The data in these charts has been archived and they are no longer being updated.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The data in these charts has been archived and they are no longer being updated. Weekly county case data prior to Jan. 2021 was not reported by the C.D.C. and is sourced from reporting by The New York Times. The C.D.C. stopped reporting data on cases in May 2023. Test positivity data is based only on test results reported to the federal government and is a seven-day average.

The rich history of Little River includes a visit from President George Washington, rumored moorings from the pirate Blackbeard and evidence of Native American campsites from thousands of years ago.

Opinion

But what gives Little River its charm isn’t a pit stop by the former president or visits from notorious pirates – it’s the families and traditions of the community that have endured for generations.

Toni Bessent, 70, has lived in Little River for most of her life and said her family has been in Little River since around 1766.

“Little River has been here for so long and has so much history,” Bessent said. “I’ve tried to leave a couple times and I come right back. It’s just where my history is and it’s where I have lots of friends I went to school with who are still my friends today.”

This month, Horry County officials are remembering Little River as a historic place by unveiling a historic marker.

On Aug. 10, a memorial commemorating the history of Little River will be unveiled in a ceremony at 10 a.m. at the County parking lot at 4466 Mineola Ave. The South Carolina State Historical Marker is sponsored by the Horry County Historic Preservation Commission, which is funded by the Horry County Council. The wording is approved by the South Carolina Department of Archives and History.

“When you do a state marker, it’s vetted,” Susan Platt, chair of Horry County’s Historic Preservation Commission, said. “We do the research, it goes to the state, they have a PHD who adds to your research, takes away and then works on what text will be on the actual marker. Then, it goes to yet another committee of staff members who are PHDs, and this is their career, who also look at it before they approve that state marker.”

Little River is widely regarded as one of the first permanent settlements in Horry County. According to an article in the Independent Republic Quarterly by late historian Catherine Heniford Lewis, British colonists had lived in the area since before 1734. Evidence that Native Americans fished and camped in Little River has been found from as early as the Middle Woodland Period (400-800 A.D.), according to Horry County Museum curator Abigail Geedy.

Platt describes the people of Little River as resourceful, using the expansion of Highway 17 as an example. The widening of the road from two to four lanes caused many plots of land with historic structures on them to be condemned to make room, but instead of allowing the demolition of the buildings, many residents opted to pick up and move the historic structures.

One example is the historic Parson’s Table restaurant, a former church that was moved from the intersection of Mineola Avenue and Highway 17 to its current location.

The unveiling of the historic memorial is the latest initiative to come from the county’s Historic Preservation Committee. The committee also began interviewing longtime residents for an oral history program last year.

News

Even with tourism, Little River’s character remains

The Little River economy, which, early on, was centered around commercial fishing, lumber and turpentine trade, shifted after the great depression. Recreational fishing, party boats and now casino boats drive the economy of the Little River docks off Mineola Avenue.

Wade Long, however, has continued his family’s tradition of fishing commercially in Little River. He owns the docks next to the Crab Catcher’s Restaurant, offering jet ski rentals to visitors of Little River but also supplying restaurants with fresh seafood through a family commercial fishing business. Long said his grandfather moved to Little River, fished and built boats and that commercial fishing on Little River has been a family tradition ever since.

“In my lifetime there hasn’t been a lot of change in Little River,” Long said. “I still talk to some people I worked for when I was here as a kid. Danny Juel rents from me and puts his boat in the dock. I worked for him when I was a young kid. He’s in his 60s now and he’s fished his whole life. The Juels and the Longs have both been here a very long time making their living off this waterfront.”

It isn’t just the casino boats and watersport activities that draw people to the Intracoastal. It’s also the character of a small fishing town that Little River still holds, which is evident from the docks on Water Front Avenue.

“Traffic from Highway 17 and so many people coming here from other places have changed the character a good bit,” Bessent said. “But I think it still has some of its original character and that’s kind of the draw of Little River, which is ironic because tourism is what changes the character.”

Horry County is home to many historic properties, Little River included. Structures that are historically significant can be recognized on the National Register of Historic Places and also the Horry County Historic Property Register.

“One of our highest priorities is to get structures on our local register because it adds a level of protection,” said Lou Conklin, a senior planner for Horry County and staff liaison for the Historic Preservation Commission. “If you’re on the local register, it does help you in regards to development because a developer can’t just purchase your property and tear your structure down.”

Soon, an app will be launched which will make more accessible the catalog of historic structures in the county.

“If you have all this history and great stuff and you can’t get it into the hands of tourists or new people who don’t know it, it’s worthless. It’s in a book or archives somewhere,” Platt said. “An app opens it up to everyone.”