But a few years ago, it looked as if everything might change. Some of the island's biggest landowners wanted to build a bridge to the mainland. The islanders had seen other coastal communities ruined this way. They feared that as soon as a bridge was built, resort owners, construction workers and tourists would be racing across it by the hundreds.

Fortunately, the bridge was never built. Thanks in part to environmentalist Dana Beach, Sandy Island's unique, peaceful community has been preserved. Its longleaf pine trees and endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers have been protected. Forests on the northern end of the island stand unspoiled.

Let's Make a Deal!
Beach's name perfectly matches his passion: preserving the South Carolina shore. As a boy, he spent summers playing on the state's sugary sand beaches and boating on sleepy coastal rivers that empty into the sea. But as he grew older, Beach noticed that resorts and other buildings were threatening the beauty of the coast and its lush animal habitats.

In 1989 Beach founded the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League. When he learned in 1993 that a group planned to build a bridge to Sandy Island, he immediately joined others to stop its construction. Through that successful effort, he realized that the island's environment would not be truly safe until a forest north of the village was set aside as a nature preserve, where no one could ever build anything.

Creating such a preserve costs money, which the residents of Sandy Island could not raise on their own. But Beach found out that South Carolina owed nature a favor: a national law requires states to make up for the loss to the environment when they destroy wetlands with highways. South Carolina had just approved a new highway to run through acres of wetlands. In 1996 Beach convinced Buck Limehouse, a transportation official, that protecting Sandy Island was the perfect way to make up for the destruction and obey the law. Limehouse is happy with the arrangement. Beach, he says, is "a fair person. We both got a good deal."

Beach and others interested in saving Sandy Island soon cut another amazing deal. They persuaded the main landowners on Sandy Island to sell much of their land. The transportation department and the Nature Conservancy bought 9,000 acres, which are now a preserve.

Since then, Beach's group has stopped a major highway project that threatened some of South Carolina's historic plantations, a wildlife refuge and parts of a national forest.

Now Beach knows that his kids, ages 3 and 7, and their kids will be able to explore his beloved woods on Sandy Island and hear the songbirds that nest there. Says Beach: "The longleaf-pine ecosystem, one of the most endangered ecosystems in the nation, will be protected forever."