The story of Alice Belin Flagg is probably the most romantically tragic. Alice was caught in the traditional dilemma of the upper-class belle in love with a beau her family did not approve of. Her beau presented her with an engagement ring, but since she couldn't wear it on her finger, she wore it on a ribbon around her neck where it was eventually discovered by her brother, who ripped it off and threw it into the creek on their plantation. Of course, Alice pined away for the ring of her forbidden beau and died for want of true love. The local superstition is that if you walk around her grave 13 times backwards, you will evoke her spirit.
Many people claim to have felt tugs on their own rings.
Until the 1900s the beaches north of Murrells Inlet were practically uninhabited because of geographical inaccessibility and the poor economy. In what is now Restaurant Row at the north end of Myrtle Beach, a salt making operation with more than 30 buildings was destroyed during the Civil War. The area later became the first campground in the area, mostly for people from Conway, and is still used as a campground today.