From the air, Myrtle Beach appears whole, a seamless stretch of neighborhoods, businesses, and beachfront stitched together by palm-lined roads and salt air. On the ground, however, the map tells a more complicated story.
Scattered throughout the city are roughly 40 “donut holes,” small pockets of Horry County land entirely surrounded by Myrtle Beach city limits. Invisible to most passersby, these enclaves exist in a kind of municipal limbo. They look like the city and function beside the city, yet legally remain outside it.
The result is a quiet but persistent confusion.
Residents living inside these pockets do not pay city taxes, nor do they receive municipal services such as city-run garbage collection. A neighbor across the street may wheel a city-issued bin to the curb for pickup by municipal crews, while a household just a few doors down must hire a private trash hauler. The boundary is often imperceptible. The difference is measured not in geography, but in governance.
Under South Carolina law, Myrtle Beach cannot simply absorb these unincorporated parcels. Annexation requires a formal legal process that in many cases proves difficult or slow to complete.
Mayor Mark Kruea has acknowledged the structural challenge, noting that the fragmented jurisdiction complicates efforts to deliver consistent services across neighborhoods that appear, to any casual observer, indistinguishable.
For small businesses, the divide can be even more tangible. Licensing fees, regulatory standards, and zoning requirements shift depending on which side of an unseen line a property falls.
What appears to be one city is, in practice, a patchwork landscape where boundaries exist not on sidewalks, but on paper.