♪ [birds chirping] (female narrator) Support for this program was provided in part by... [motor rumbling] [horn tooting] (narrator) It's early morning on the Waccamaw River, and the kids from Sandy Island are heading for school on the "Prince Washington," the only school boat in the state of South Carolina.

It's named for the great-grandson of Phillip Washington, the founder of the island community.

The kids' parents aren't far behind, going to jobs in Myrtle Beach, Pa wleys Island, and Litchfield.

[motor humming] ♪ ♪ Back on the island, the natural world is starting its day too.

A red-cockaded woodpecker, one of the rarest birds on earth, has left her nest in an old longleaf pine tree to gather breakfast for her chicks.

There's a peaceful feeling here, a kind of harmony between humans and nature, between the past and the present.

♪ But a few years ago, this tranquility was threatened, and if it hadn't been for a group of people willing to work together and a near-miraculous series of events, Sandy Island might be a very different place today.

♪ ♪ Sandy Island is a river island.

It lies between the Pee Dee and the Waccamaw, flanked by Myrtle Beach and Georgetown, just west of Highway 17 in one of the state's most rapidly developing areas.

The rivers run along the sides of the island until they join further south with the Sampit and the Black to form Winyah Bay along th e coast of Georgetown County.

At 12,000 acres, 4 miles wide and 7 miles long, Sandy Island is the largest undeveloped freshwater island on the east coast.

It has a spectacular range of ecosystems-- cypress and tupelo swamps, lakes, marshes, dunes, and forests.

Its sandy hills form the highest point in Georgetown County.

It is also home to a historic Gullah community of about 130 people, descendants of enslaved Africans who once worked the island's rice plantations.

With no bridge to the island, these proud landowners have remained close-knit and private.

♪ (male speaker) This island here, from way back, people had a good relationship with one another, family loving family.

We were one big family, and we were brought up thataway from our ancestors... to help one another, share what we have with one another.

That was instilled in us from the older generation, and it's still in some of us today.

(narrator) Phillip Washington, a freedman, founded this community after emancipation.

Many of his descendants still live here today.

(female speaker) My great-great-granddad was Phillip Washington.

He also purchased land to build a church.

We are here today because of Phillip Washington.

He was the one that purchased this land for us.

Our parents struggled, our grandparents struggled, and it means a lot to me because if it was not for them and their struggling and dedication, this island wouldn't be here today, and we wouldn't be on this island.

♪ (male speaker) Sandy Island was certainly part of the great rice culture of the South Carolina and Georgia coast.

There are not that many places on the American continent where rice could have been grown in the methods that were used.

Somebody estimated that there are only 60-something miles of riverfront, the front footage, that would really allow for that in both states.

It had to be grown on rivers that were close enough to the ocean to be raised and lowered by ocean tides, but far enough from the ocean that they didn't have salt water getting into the rice fields.

So it took very special places that had such low-lying rivers and low-lying swamps beside them to be able to do that.

(female speaker) To me, growing here on Sandy Island was fantastic.

I enjoyed it, every moment.

And what we didn't have didn't matter.

You know what I'm sayin'?

It only mattered that you were alive, you were well, you were cared for, you were protected, and people were sincere.

That's the part that touches my heart when I think about it.

The older people, those were my role models, the older folk, because they left a legacy here for me to govern my children by.

You know, knowing that you were in a community where people cared, that's the most important thing... growing up on Sandy Island where the love was.

There was sincerity in their love.

(narrator) But in 1993, a plan emerged that could have changed Sandy Island forever.

Two wealthy South Carolina entrepreneurs, E. Craig Wall Jr. of Canal Industries and Roger Milliken, textile tycoon from the Upstate, owned about 3/4 of the island.

In April 1993, their partnership, Sandy Island Associates, applied for a permit to build a $2-million bridge to the island so they could log their land and truck timber to the mainland.

Some said the bridge would cost more than the value of the timber.

When word of the permit application got out, local environmentalists were alarmed.

Genevieve Peterkin has known and loved Sandy Island all her life.

Her mother, Genevieve Wilcox Chandler, interviewed people there for the Federal Writers' Project of the WPA during the Great Depression.

As a child, Mrs. Peterkin went al ong with her to Sandy Island.

Today she lives nearby in Murrells Inlet.

My sister's neighbor went to Myrtle Beach to play bridge, duplicate bridge.

She called me one morning, and she said, "If you are close to Sandy Island, I have something to talk to you about," and she came to see me.

She said, "We were playing bridge with two men "who were talking about their business.

We didn't know them, but we were just playing bridge."

She said they worked for Canal Industries.

"But, Sister, they were talking about "that Sandy Island is gonna be developed.

There's talk of putting a bridge over there."

That's how I learned about that, and it was really all by chance.

(narrator) So Mrs. Peterkin called the Coastal Conservation League, a group that works to protect the environment of the South Carolina coastal plain.

Dana Beach is its director.

(Dana Beach) In 1993, we were informed about the bridge proposal to Sandy Island, and at the time, I didn't know much about Sandy Island.

We quickly learned that it was one of the most important parcels on the coast.

It has the highest concentration of red-cockaded woodpeckers, endangered woodpeckers, on private land in the state and perhaps in the Southeast.

It has some of the oldest longleaf pine, native longleaf pine forest, in the world.

So it was so critical that it be protected, that it not be developed.

The owners were seeking a permit to build a bridge and asserted that the bridge was to be used for logging.

As we looked more deeply into that, we discovered that the cost of the bridge exceeded essentially what we believed to be the net value of the timber.

We began analyzing the permitting situation and made the decision to oppose the bridge permit.

(narrator) But what about the residents of the island, who lived with the daily inconvenience of traveling to the mainland by boat?

To them, a bridge seemed like a godsend.

(Weathers) When I first heard they're going to build a bridge, I thought it was a good idea at that time, 'cause they contact us and I had many conversations with those guys that was instigating the bridge business.

I called a meeting with the community, and they laid out their platform of what they want to do, and it would benefit the community.

I mean, it sounds good, real good, so the community agreed, said, "Yeah, yeah, that would be nice for us."

And so we said okay.

(narrator) It just so happened that in that same year, 1993, the Conservation League had begun working with the Penn Center in Beaufort on the Penn School for Preservation, a two-year project to train Gullah people to hold onto their land.

(male speaker) We tried to get people from local communities to come participate in the Penn School for Preservation.

During that time, while we had the project in place, there were some concerns about this little island up in Horry County called Sandy Island.

There were rumors that someone was gonna develop the island, put a bridge over there and develop the island.

And the immediate thought in my mind was, I wonder what the local people think about that?

(narrator) Preservation school staff went up to Sandy Island and met with some of the residents at the landing.

(male speaker) Th e first question that came fr om the Sandy Island residents was, "Did y'all bring us some jobs?"

They assumed that the developers were going to develop the island and they were gonna have better jobs and could stay home and work.

In that sense, they thought the island would be a much-improved place to live.

Myself, growing up on an island, your expectation is high about change, and you're thinking, Gee whiz, living in isolation, poverty comes with isolation, or low-income living.

And therefore, you think that development is gonna bring a change in your economy.

So I just tried to point out some things to them.

What does this mean?

Have you thought about this?

What are the consequences of all of this development coming to the island?

What does it do for you, as an individual, as a property owner, and as a black community?

What does all this mean?

So I tried to lay out all those things to them.

And when we start to intercede in it with different folks to give us the input on it, they said, "No man."

They said, "Them people got something else up their sleeve they haven't shake down."

(McDomick) They now offered to have them come down and visit some of the areas where development had taken place and talk to some of the local people down here and get their take on wh at development meant to them.

So that went over pretty positively.

(Weathers) He took us around, and he show us, you know, what happened to Saint Helen, what was happening then to Daufuskie.

He give us a briefin' on Hilton Head Island.

You see, all those places there wa s similar to Sandy Island.

They said, "If we don't take a stand for Sandy Island, the same thing will happen to us."

And after going around, viewing the areas where people lived--of color-- it's not there anymore.

(Weathers) A person would come next to me and build a $400,000 home, and automatically it was go nna shoot my tax up, you see.

And all that was going through our mind in reference to... to being developed, this place being developed.

It would not be the same Sandy Island like it is now.

♪ (narrator) There were also questions about the bridge itself.

It would have been 8 miles away from the community over a dirt road, and it wasn't clear that the residents would be allowed to use it.

I said, "Now, where's the bridge gonna go?

"Who's gonna have control over the bridge?

"Suppose you have a mother "that gets sick in the middle of the night "and you need to get off the island, "can you go through the bridge?

"Is the bridge gonna be open?

Is it gonna be a gated community?"

(Deas) But he said the day would come when, if we didn't preserve Sandy Island, it would be that when we came to visit Sandy Island, it would be just like Brookgreen Gardens.

You would have to pay a toll to get in.

And I see that picture already on the wall.

Once all that was pointed out to the people on Sandy Island, they overwhelmingly rejected the idea of development.

(narrator) At that point, the community decided to join the Conservation League's lawsuit to defeat the bridge permit.

But the residents wanted th eir own legal representation.

Dana Beach asked Charleston lawyer Trenholm Walker to meet with them.

The purpose of the meeting would be to go over the legal avenues that were available to them.

Also, I was asked whether I would volunteer my time if they wanted me to represent them.

I said I'd be delighted to do it.

Here we had a people who were living in a community that works the way I like to think communities should work.

They seem to know everybody.

They lived on the island.

They were full of... stories and family.

My client was and remained those residents.

But if, any time, the residents had said to me, "We look at this a little differently," I would respect their wishes, even if what they want to do was different from the Conservation League.

They are concerned about their marsh and the endangered species.

I know there's a lot of groups out there that's really concerned about that, and they know that if they had gotten a bridge over here, developers was gonna do more than just a bridge, and so they were here with us, and we thank God for that.

(narrator) Then it came out that Sandy Island Associates actually had filed a development plan, which they said they were required to do.

I don't know the genesis of the development plan.

I do know that the developer maintained that the development plan wasn't a development plan.

The development plan was something they were required to do in order to satisfy some regulatory requirement.

(Weathers) They don't want to build a bridge just to harvest timber.

There is some development behind.

And that was the key point there.

It was developing coming behind, because they already had the plan of golf course, hotels, and whatever.

It was already in the making.

(narrator) And what about the impact of the bridge on the red-cockaded woodpeckers?

The owners only wanted to consider the effects on the area right around the bridge, even though they planned to cut ti mber all over the land.

(male speaker) The Fish and Wildlife Service made the argument that if a bridge is built to the island, the impacts on the red-cockaded woodpecker have to be looked at from the entire area of the island.

(narrator) So the bridge permit was denied...conditionally.

Now all the owners had to do was submit a better plan for protection of the woodpeckers, and the permit would go through.

Which worried us because we thought, Well, if he submits a plan, is there gonna be an opportunity to challenge the validity of the plan, or is it gonna be simply administrative approval?

(narrator) About two months later, the State Coastal Council held a hearing on the bridge proposal in Beaufort.

Environmentalists let the Sandy Is land community know about it, and some of them decided to attend.

I remember very well Reverend Weathers getting up and speaking to the panel.

He made a very passionate speech about Sandy Island and the residents and how they wanted to live their lives.

This representative from, I think, Sandy Island Associates-- at that time the name of the developing company-- was there, and he recognized me and some more when we walk in, and he just... his complexion changed, because of the fact that, how did it leak out to us in reference to the meeting, because we wasn't supposed to know about that meeting, you see.

That permit was supposed to be granted in our absence.

But I also remember the emphasis being placed on, from the council's side and presentations by their people on what was it that was threatened on Sandy Island, and it certainly wasn't the people.

It was the red-cockaded woodpecker.

And, of course, we were very grateful that there were some on Sandy Island.

Of course, I raised the question in my remarks, "Are we more concerned about red-cockaded woodpeckers than we were about those humans living on the island?"

(narrator) Tensions began to rise, but the proposed bridge remained the rallying point, the factor that could affect everyone.

David Farren of the Southern Environmental Law Center represented the Conservation League.

And so David Farren, with the lawyer from Canal Industries under oath on the stand, David asked, "Will the people of Sandy Island have access to the bridge if it is built?"

He squirmed because he was uneasy, and I think he was wise enough not to lie under oath, but he would rather have done that, because he didn't want to tell the truth!

Finally, he said, "Well, if someone on the island needed an ambulance, I'm sure we'd let it come across to pick 'em up."

The bridge, that is.

And the people from Sandy Island got the message loud and clear that they were not going to be using the bridge.

Until then, they thought a bridge sounded like a wonderful happening.

(Pyatt) Well, I thought it was a good thing until I found out that it was not gonna be for us.

It was only gonna be for the developers, so I didn't think it was fair for them to build a bridge and have access of getting to the island by car, and then the people that lived here all their lives still would have to use a boat.

They would give us permission when we have a funeral over on the island, they would give permission to use it at that time, but, like, any other thing, no.

So that was a slap in the face to the community then, when they heard that.

♪ I think the developers, they were shocked when they find out we had changed our mind.

(narrator) Over the next two years, there were many more meetings, and public opinion began to sway in favor of the preservation of Sa ndy Island and its community.

♪ Then in June of 1995, Milliken and Wall finally came back with a new plan for protection of the endangered species.

♪ (Banks) The requirements of the Fish and Wildlife Service were basically to get a better inventory of the number of red-cockaded woodpeckers on the island and what impact this project would have on that species.

But, for whatever reason, the applicant never produced any of that information that was being required of them, so the Coastal Council decided to just deny the permit.

♪ (narrator) The opponents of the bridge had won their case.

The case drew everybody's attention to the bridge.

The case, in effect, stopped the bridge long enough for people to say, Wait, what are we getting ready to do?

Is there a better answer?

Had we not filed the case and, in effect, put on ice the bridge for two years, I don't think that the public would have had an awareness of the issue.

I don't think that all the creative thinking that went into the solution would have occurred.

Instead, we would have seen a bridge.

It would have been business as usual.

(narrator) But the Conservation League feared that even denial of the bridge permit might not protect the island.

It could still be developed with a ferry, like Daufuskie Island had been.

♪ (Beach) We began exploring ways to potentially see if there's a way we could somehow buy the island from the owners.

♪ We met with Spence Wise, who represented Mr. Milliken, with Sydney Fletch, who represented Craig Wall.

We sat down, and we had a heart-to-heart with them, and we said, "We'd really like to explore the possibility of finding public funding to buy the island."

And Spence said, "Roger Milliken ne ver sells land...never."

(narrator) It seemed they had reached a dead end.

Then they learned of a man wh o might be able to help them.

A local Nature Conservancy board member directed them to Rick Webble, a well-known landscape architect and a member of the Conservancy's Long Island board.

Webble had Mr. Milliken's ear and was willing to talk to him about Sandy Island.

(Beach) Ultimately, the best outcome would be to purchase the island in its entirety, and Rick had said, "Well, I will do what I can do "to make that case to Mr. Milliken and see what I can come up with."

(narrator) In the meantime, a highway entered the picture.

The South Carolina Department of Transportation was building a major new road west of Myrtle Beach-- the Conway Bypass-- on land that had about a hundred acres of wetlands.

To build bridges over them would cost the state millions of dollars.

One way to save money would be to fill the bypass wetlands in and save others by a process called wetlands mitigation.

Buck Limehouse was chairman of the South Carolina Department of Transportation.

Our methodology at that time to move these projects fast was to stick the money in escrow and move on and then let the people who are interested in conservation and wetlands preservation and other type of, uh... mitigation projects, let them help us identify it.

(narrator) The Department of Natural Resources created the Winyah Bay Task Force to identify wetlands to buy for mitigation.

Joe Carter was the task force chairman.

(Joe Carter) I was assured by DNR that all we needed to do was quantify and qualify the natural resources and thereby define a geographical area of concern.

Well, before we could start quantifying and qualifying, the members of the task force and I polled each member.

They agreed, to a man and to a woman, that Sandy Island needed to be protected.

(Banks) So the Fish and Wildlife Service, along with the other regulatory agencies, worked with DOT and the Federal Highway Administration to explore the entire route of the Conway Bypass and see if we could help them reduce the amount of bridging.

As it turns out, we were able to reduce it by 5 miles, which amounted to about a $75-million savings for the Department of Transportation.

For the wetlands that would still be impacted, the DOT put $5 million into an escrow account that would be used to buy mitigation lands.

(narrator) Sandy Island was the jewel, the ideal choice for wetlands mitigation.

But the owners still said no to a sale, and the struggle to protect Sa ndy Island seemed stalemated.

(Banks) The problem was that Mr. Wall and Mr. Milliken, who are both great South Carolinians, had other plans for Sandy Island.

And frankly, because of other things, they didn't really trust a lot of conservation groups.

They figured they were obstructionists and trying to tell them wh at to do with their property, and they didn't feel that th at was the right thing to do.

♪ (narrator) Even South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, then a U.S.

Congressman, went to bat for a solution.

(Mark Sanford) It is just an amazing piece of South Carolina, really unusual from a topography and a geological standpoint, and I think that what was most special was that little community there on the southeastern end of the island.

I guess there gets to be a point of diminishing returns from the standpoint of accumulating things on earth.

And the one plea, if you will, that I registered with both men was this notion of legacy, of what is really going to stand out not next year or the year after, but 50 or 100 or 150 or 200 years from now.

And so I suspect that it wouldn't have ended up on their radar screen were it not for local residents sa ying, Wait a minute.

We've seen what's happened to Daufuskie.

We've seen what's happened on Hilton Head.

We've seen what's happened in a whole host of places, and we don't want to go that way.

We think that there's something unique here, and we want to keep it this way.

If they hadn't done that, I don't know that all this would have been brought about.

So I'd give credit to each one of the players involved in the process, but I'd give particular credit for the way those folks in that local community began this process of dominoes rolling that ultimately saved Sandy Island.

(narrator) Finally, the Conservation League got the phone call they had been waiting for.

The owners had agreed to sell Sandy Island for $12 million.

Now the question was how to pay for it.

The DOT escrow fund for wetlands mitigation came to mind.

We thought, Okay, that seems fair, but where are we gonna get $12 million?

So I called Buck Limehouse, who was the head of the Highway Commission.

I said, "Well, we have reason to believe that Mr. Milliken "will reduce the price by a million dollars through a bargain sale, and Nature Conservancy would be able to put in a million."

I remember it.

Dana Beach called me, and his organization was concerned that Sandy Island was under threat of development, and he said, "I think you can help."

(Beach) So we need $10 million.

And Buck said, "Great, we can do that."

And he said, "Now, what about that 6,000 acres of bottomland hardwoods that are upstream?"

And we said, "Well, that's great property.

"It's in the Waccamaw Refuge boundary that we hope to complete."

He said, "Well, why don't we put in another 2 million for that?"

And we said, "That would be superb.

That would be great."

The bottom line was that, in buying Sandy Island and other wetlands that we will put into trust for the citizens of South Carolina and America, we were able to spend less than 10 million-- I don't remember the figures now, it's been so long-- and we cut 60 million off the cost of that construction project.

So it was a huge win-win for the taxpayer.

♪ ♪ (Beach) He said, "We would agree to set up a mitigation bank "where other projects could be mitigated out of this same purchase so it's not just the hundred acres of Conway Bypass; it's other projects."

And the DOT liked that idea.

It shows you that the standard way of doing things is not very creative.

The Sandy Island purchase was the greatest mitigation initiative, to my knowledge, in the country.

♪ (Limehouse) We were able to help save considerably more important resources, like the wetlands and native species habitat, through positive, proactive processes like this than we ever would through just working through the traditional federal regulatory permitting process.

So I think, from the standpoint of Fish and Wildlife Service, this was very positive and hopefully an approach that will be used more and more.

I was actually disappointed that more states and the Federal Highway Administration, who was so supportive of what we were doing, didn't grab this and go with it.

I thought it would spread like wildfire.

(Carter) It happened in South Carolina because we, as South Carolinians, no matter our desire to see the economy grow and be progressive and all the other things that we'd like to be, we still have black water in our veins.

We still don't mind getting pluff mud between our toes.

We are still very much, as we were a hundred- and-some-odd years ago, outdoorsmen.

I am a conservationist.

I do believe that protecting the vital resources of the state of South Carolina-- particularly our water resources because the waters that transit th e area around Sandy Island are waters that we use to service the 300,000 tourists who come here every week of the summer in Myrtle Beach.

♪ (Beach) I've never met Roger Milliken.

I've never met him to this day.

But he came through.

He was a man of his word and even better.

He sold the property; they sold it at a discount.

They were very, very honest and good businessmen on it.

And as a result, the state has reaped this tremendous reward, that today that property would be worth easily $100 million.

(Walker) Mr. Milliken voluntarily entered this solution.

He didn't have to do it.

He could have fought this resistance to the bridge.

He had the wherewithal to pour legal resources on it forever, but he made a decision not to.

And I'd like to think he made that choice because he came to the conclusion that it was a win for everybody, not just a win for him.

A lesser man could have, with the kind of money he had, simply said, No one is gonna tell me what to do.

Nobody is gonna push me around and make me sell this land, and I'm not gonna sell it, and I'm gonna develop it regardless of what anyone thinks.

But it really takes a... a person of considerable character, I think, to assess objectively the whole picture and come to a conclusion that may not be your first gut reaction, and I think that's what happened.

Some of the interesting features of the island... (narrator) In the summer of 1996, Sandy Island played host to a victory celebration.

Pray, O God, that You will continue to strengthen this community and we will live in unity and in strength.

Today marks the beginning of a dream come true for the agencies and organizations listed on the back of your program.

It marks a milestone in what can be accomplished when a diverse group of people agree on a common goal.

♪ [applause] ♪ (narrator) The Governor was scheduled to attend.

Instead, he had to be at the funeral of former Sandy Island property owner Craig Wall, who had died suddenly the week before.

♪ [motor humming] Now the South Carolina Department of Transportation owns most of Sandy Island.

As its wetland mitigation bank is used up, the island will revert to the Nature Conservancy, who currently administers it.

Furman Long is the Conservancy's island manager.

(Furman Long) When DOT bought this island, I can tell you one thing about the island.

With all the different groups and all the different private people involved, not one person ever objected to the purchase of Sandy Island, which is something that is very unusual when the government starts spending money for an island.

This is just a jewel right between Myrtle Beach being developed on one side and Georgetown County on the other side, a beautiful, unique area right in the middle, and the public gets to use it.

It's protected wildlife sanctuary, a jewel right in the middle of two communities being developed every day.

(narrator) Under the new covenants, parts of Sandy Island have been opened to the public for the first time.

(Long) This is Indian Lake, one of the nicest areas for fishing in Georgetown County.

It's just fantastic fishing for both bass and bream.

It also makes an excellent place to kayak.

You'll see plenty of alligators, plenty of egrets, all types of birds, as well as ma ny different types of snakes.

As soon as DOT purchased the lake, they took the dam down on one end and the barricade down the other end, and we permanently opened it up to the public for fishing.

(narrator) But what does Sandy Island's new status mean for its residents?

All the attention it has gotten ha s raised the interest of people on what the islanders ca ll "the other side."

(Deas) Sandy Island is a very interesting place, 'cause I'm always... at the landing on the other side, on the mainland, and people comes to that landing... out of just curiosity.

They're thinking they're comin' to Sandy Island.

Oh, you should see people.

They'll be rushin' like they got to catch the ferry boat or catch the transfer boat or whatever, but when they find out they're not at Sandy Island, then they get kind of baffled, because they heard so much about Sandy Island and they want to get to Sandy Island.

♪ (narrator) Today local schools bring their kids for tours of the island gu ided by environmental groups.

♪ ♪ (male speaker) Had a really good opportunity to bring some of the kids over and see what some of their classmates have to do just to get to school every morning, taking the school boat, and it's been a great experience.

We've gotten the kids over here, and they get to ride the school boat over, and we do interpretation of different habitats, including longleaf pine and the rice culture that's so important a part of this culture here.

Anything we can do to help out with the residents of Sandy Island and to incorporate the habitats on Sandy Island into our program, we certainly would like to do so.

(narrator) Recently, Coastal Carolina University and the Historic Rice Fields Association worked with people in the community to help create a library in the island's old schoolhouse.

(male speaker) It occurred to me that there might be opportunities in the Waccamaw Neck area where the library facilities could be improved.

And Sandy Island, which is so remote and hard to get to, seemed like a logical place to do that.

Generations apparently came to school here in this building, so it's really appropriate that it turns into a library and continues that legacy.

(female speaker) We worked directly with Reverend Weathers and asked him every question we could think of to ask.

So we got the most appropriate books and put them in the most appropriate space and involved the people as much as we could.

(narrator) Mary Pyatt grew up on Sandy Island.

As a young woman, she left to work and raise a family near Chicago.

Now she's back home for good.

So one Saturday morning, I had received a phone call from a family member.

And he said, "Mary, the people are down there "with the books for the library, "and no one is down there.

Would you go?"

I said, "Okay."

Someone said, "The books are here in the library, but we don't have a librarian."

I said, "I'll be the librarian."

But it really was my heart to see this building was put to some kind of positive use, especially for the younger children.

Well, I've been gone for about 40-plus years.

But during that time, I had came back and forth.

I knew when I came back, I had a river to cross, but I didn't let that change my mind.

I feel like in life... you have to do what you have got to do.

I focus on coming back home.

[birds calling] (Weathers) To me, it's unique, it's private, and we don't have all the crime that you have on the mainland.

So we are trying to keep this community like it is.

We don't know how long it's gonna last, but we're at least trying...yeah.

(Deas) I would like to see Sandy Island... you know, have a better way of traveling back and forth across the river, but I don't want to see it developed.

One developer comes in and put up one building, and they'll say, Well, this gonna be a building just for me to come over to relax when I want to get from the busy go-around of where I live.

Just hold your piece for a month or so.

Then you'll see them comin' in just like ants, and this place will be built up.

Truly speakin', and that's how they does it.

If and when they develop Sandy Island, the local residents of Sandy Island has to have a part in it.

Whatever revenue is gained from the development, they have to have a part in it.

And I think if you talk to some of the people on Sandy Island, they will say that we're concerned about, you know-- we want better jobs, we want to make money, we want better healthcare for our children, better houses for our families, just like anybody else.

So they've got to be a part of it...whatever it is.

(narrator) One young man has returned to the island with a dream... and a business plan.

(male speaker) I'm the son of Samuel Pyatt Jr. and Beulah Mae Pyatt.

I was born in Georgetown, South Carolina, and raised over here on Sandy Island, so I'm a Sandy Island native.

I went off into the military-- just a little history about me-- in 1993 after school, served in the Air Force, and am currently an E6 in the Air Force Reserve.

I went all the way around th e world and made it back home to do my dream as a tour on Sandy Island.

The business is about four weeks old now.

It's brand-new.

So far business has been picking up pretty good.

After slavery, they were still using the rice field... for themselves.

(voice-over) I was told by my dad a while back, "Where you're sitting is a gold mine."

Anytime I went across on the mainland, there was a whole bunch of tourists that want to know about Sandy Island.

And it kind of reminds me of the story of the guy who sold all his land and come to find out in his backyard, he had diamond, you know.

[chuckling] So I'm not gonna sell my land to find out, when I know that there is diamond here.

This island is a precious jewel, and it's more than just an island.

It's the African-American community on the island that everybody would like to know about.

They call us the Gullah people, and we are descendants of Gullah.

The majority of men on the island are volunteer firefighters.

We also have a picture in here of those folks.

Charles Edward Pyatt, my uncle, he is the captain of this unit, the Unit 6 Fire Department.

This right here, Tours of Sandy Island, is something huge.

It's huge in the making.

It's a whole lot bigger than me.

So my goal is actually to get the whole community of Sandy Island involved, turn this into a tourist attraction, but controlled, a limited amount of people.

Show them and have them experience what we experience on a daily basis and give them a little bit of history.

The things a lot of folks may take for granted, show how we actually endure with these... these good things.

We don't take it for granted.

We adapt ourselves to it, and we're happy that we're able to overcome any obstacles that come our way, even with storms and stuff.

People ask, "What do you do when storms come?"

Stay on the island.

(narrator) Rommy Pyatt comes by his entrepreneurial spirit honestly, from his mother, who has plans to turn her general store into a restaurant.

(Beulah Pyatt) I would like to expand it and maybe one day be able to hire at least two workers, people that's living here on the island and won't have to be transported across the river... you know, work right here.

But that's what I'm looking, into the future.

♪ (Campbell) We have found out that we cannot preserve the Gullah culture unless we preserve the land.

We consider the Gullah culture a land-based culture.

And that is, the land supports the actual existence of Gullah families.

They've always lived together, they've always had a strong family network, and it has been enhanced by the fact that they're all occupying the same space.

♪ (Joyner) The Gullah culture was formed in one of the world's greatest, most terrible forced cultural transactions, in the crucible of human slavery, and not only slavery, but the forced exodus from one continent to another.

And the culture that was forged in that crucible is not a weak or fragile culture.

♪ (Beach) We still worry, and we should worry, about the impact of rising land values on property taxes on the folks who live over there.

Even though it wasn't developed, the property becomes simply more valuable every year, and more and more people are gonna be looking at every piece of land that is not owned by and protected by the public, including the roughly 300 acres that are owned by members of the community.

♪ And I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there are people around here who keep an eye on it... in case there's anything available to buy.

I can name 'em, but I won't do that!

♪ (McDomick) I hope they keep the land, though.

What it's worth, you could spend that in a year's time.

But if you had the land, you can always get... you know, you can get money if you've got land.

But once you get the money and the land is gone, the money's gonna be gone too.

♪ I believe we've got a future.

All we've got to do is teach our children to hold onto what's yours and don't give it up for no reason at all.

♪ (Rommy Pyatt) While Sandy Island is what it is right now, I would encourage all the younger folks that's coming up on Sandy Island, the kids, to get with their grandparents and the older folks and get as much history about this island as possible.

I guess, like anybody else, once something is gone, you miss it.

But once we realize what we have right now and don't wait until it's gone, we preserve it right now so that we are able to share it with the rest of the world.

♪ (Campbell) Sandy Island as a microcosm can be used as an example for other communities.

Hopefully, with the Nature Conservancy's protection of Sandy Island and its management of Sandy Island, that probably could become a prototype on how you use these two components.

People and environment can form an economy that is mutually beneficial.

♪ (Sanford) When you go pulling up by boat to the big oak tree there at the base of the land , it speaks to the spiritual part of who each one of us are.

And I believe that part of who we are is not only spiritual in nature, but it is indeed, at least in the South Carolina form, grounded to certain spots.

♪ (Weathers) We've come this far by fate, and we got to keep on... by fate, you know... believin' that there are some better thing behind.

This island was built on faith from the ancestors, and I think we came a long ways.

Yeah, by the help of God, yeah.

♪ ♪ Program captioned by: Co mpuScripts Captioning, Inc. 80 3.988.8438 ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪