Georgetown, named in honor of England’s King George I, became an official port in 1732, and by the time of the revolution was an important center of commerce. Acres of cypress swamps were cleared and over 780 miles of canals were dug in the area, creating the second largest rice cultivation culture the world has known. Another important cash crop also raised at Georgetown was indigo, used to make a blue dye. The history of these important crops is told in the Rice Museum, located in the Georgetown Historic District.

Ships trading in these commodities reached Georgetown by passing between the appropriately named North and South Islands to enter Winyah Bay and then continuing another fourteen miles upstream. In 1789, Revolutionary War Patriot Paul Trapier donated a tract of land on North Island for the establishment of Georgetown Lighthouse. However, the newly formed Lighthouse Service did not take immediate advantage of the offer, and another decade passed before construction began on the lighthouse.

On February 21, 1795, $5,000 was appropriated for a lighthouse near the entrance of the harbor of Georgetown. This sum was carried into the surplus fund, and another appropriation of the same amount was made on March 19, 1798 along with an additional $2,000. A seventy-two-foot, pyramidal tower, constructed of cypress wood, was finished in the early part of 1801, during the final days of John Adams’ presidency. Besides the tower, a two-story keeper’s dwelling was built along with a tank for holding the whale oil that fueled the lighthouse’s lamp. The wooden tower’s life was cut short by a violent storm in 1806.