“H” is for Hollywood

“H” is for Hollywood (Charleston County; 2020 population 5,339). The automobile bumper sticker declares, “We’re the Real Hollywood.” In fact, no tourist would confuse this crossroads village on the western edge of Charleston County with California’s Tinseltown. In the 1880s Charles W. Geraty began a new farming venture on land five miles west of the Stono River. Truck farming was the community’s economic base. Within a short time, his business enterprises included a store and a bank within a natural grove of holly trees. At its incorporation in 1949, the town counted five hundred residents scattered along a one-mile strip of road where S.C. Highway 162 crossed S.C. Highway 165.  In the last decades of the twentieth century Hollywood evolved into a bedroom community, with its small town center providing services to a growing local population.