If you’re looking to experience a different side of quintessential Charleston, consider visiting the Johns Island area for the day to spend time surrounded by nature and reset as the new year begins.

Johns Island, the largest island in South Carolina, rests between Charleston and the Kiawah and Seabrook island communities. The area evokes a rural, off-the-beaten-path feel that’s ideal for outdoorsy folks, but it’s also got a few artsy hidden gems, including a community Art Walk.

Here are some spots to check out in the John’s Island area:

Music and visual art

Freshfields Village stands at the crossroads of Kiawah, Seabrook and Johns islands and hosts family oriented, pet-friendly community events throughout the year. This year the annual Art Walk takes place from 4-7 p.m. on Feb. 14, gathering art lovers and artists together for an evening of live art and live music. Attendees can see live art demonstrations, view works from local and visiting artists and browse the surrounding art shops.

There are a variety of free outdoor concerts coming up on the village green, including Blues by the Sea, which takes place 3-7 p.m. April 13 featuring blues bands from Mississippi, Florida and Houston, and Spring Music on the Green, which takes place 6-9 p.m. April 18 and features a four-piece party band.

Fun fact: One of the oldest independent bookstores in the Charleston area, Indigo Books, is tucked away in Freshfields Village.

Brewery and coffee roastery Estuary Beans & Barley is laid back and pet-friendly, with regular food trucks and live music from Charleston artists. For those who enjoy dancing, there’s the Swing n’ Brew event taking place 6:30-8:30 p.m. Jan. 22. Starting Feb. 2, the Sunday Sessions are back from 3-6 p.m. featuring music, poetry and comedy.

With high season about to kick back in, a handful of other hangouts on Johns Island will regularly host local live music including Tattooed Moose, Seanachai Whiskey and Cocktail Bar and Low Tide Brewing. Check out their social media pages to stay updated.

Nature

The iconic, ethereal Angel Oak Park should be at the top of any nature lovers list. The Angel Oak, which is 400-500 years old and known as the “Lowcountry Treasure,” stands at 65 feet high. It’s a holistic experience to stand beneath this ancient tree that has withstood centuries.

Johns Island County Park has beautiful walking trails as well as a disc golf course and a six-target archery range course. With the Mullet Hall Equestrian Center on site, it’s not unusual to see people riding horses, too. When the weather warms, Toast Under the Oaks live music series starts back up from 5:30-7:30 p.m. on March 6 and April 3.

Stono River County Park off of Main Road also has gorgeous walking trails with views of the marshland along the Stono River. This park is also the trailhead for the West Ashley Greenway.

While Folly Beach is the go-to, for those looking for an alternative beach-day experience when the weather warms up, it could be fun to post up at Kiawah Beachwalker Park before checking out a new place on Johns Island before heading back home.

Updated: Mar. 12, 2025 at 5:09 PM PDT

JOHNS ISLAND, S.C. (WCSC) - Construction is underway for a $5.8 million project on Johns Island.

The Barberry Woods Restoration Project aims to reduce flooding in Barberry Woods and The Cottages.

Flooding often blocks the single entryway in the Barberry Woods cutting off emergency services.

“That road into the community can be closed for almost a week. We need to have an access point into the neighborhood. We need the residents to be able to get out, we need emergency services to be able to get in,” City of Charleston Director of Stormwater Management Matthew Fountain said.

The project is expected to reduce flooding to less than eight hours during a 100-year storm event.

The City of Charleston estimates that 3,437 residents and 1,687 housing units will benefit from these stormwater improvements.

In a statement, Mayor William Cogswell said “Johns Island has long needed flooding relief in this area, and we’re grateful for SCOR’s partnership in making this project a reality. Once completed, it will significantly improve the quality of life for residents.”

$4.9M is funded by SCOR’s ARPA Stormwater Infrastructure Program. Director of Stormwater Management Matthew Fountain says part of the reason they got that funding was because it’s a green infrastructure project.

“Rather than taking the project, clearing all the trees and basically just building a big pond or something with large pipes and having a road on top of it that we can use for access or a pump station building, this goes back basically as a forest of wetlands,” Fountain said.

They’ll clear the property to dig out a lot of the land to build a low lying wetland area with a meandering stream through it.

The project will also include wetland storage cells, maintenance berms, a walkway and a bridge.

“Between trees and shrubs we’re planting more than 13 thousand individual planting over and then again we’ll preserve that in perpetuity so it will continue to expand out like you would see in any healthy ecological system over the years,” Fountain said.

Fountain said while they are in the tree clearing phase now, when it’s done, he thinks it will be a huge amenity for the community because of the walkway and greenspace it will provide.

Construction is estimated to take 10 months.

Copyright 2025 WCSC. All rights reserved.

JOHN ISLAND — A combination of soaring construction prices and a road plan many residents opposed have put a significant Johns Island artery project on hold.

The route known as Main Road Corridor Segment C aimed to improve Bohicket Road from Maybank Highway to River Road with redesigned intersections, the widening of parts of the two-lane road and construction of a 12-foot-wide pedestrian and bicycle path.

In 2024 it became clear residents overwhelmingly disliking the plan, with just 23 percent supporting what the county laid out in public meetings. The county councilman representing Johns Island — Joe Boykin, vowed in May to "fight to my last breath" to strip the pedestrian and bike path from the concept.

"What I would tell you is that Segment C has been shelved," Boykin said Feb. 17, but added "It’s not dead and gone."

Many residents opposed the roughly nine-mile bike and pedestrian path because it would require land from dozens of property owners and would cross many driveways on the Bohicket Creek side of Bohicket Road.

They also opposed widening Bohicket Road beyond Plow Ground Road. The intersection improvements were controversial due to significant impacts on homes and businesses.

County staff set out to address the issue, but "we have been unable to satisfy the concerns that were raised by citizens," program manager Alex Owsiak told Charleston County Council at a recent meeting.

Also, there's no funding left to pay for the work, he said.

"In general, there are going to be limited resources that are going to be reallocated if folks don’t support what we put forward," said Councilwoman Jenny Honeycutt, who represents Kiawah and Seabrook islands along with Folly Beach and most of James Island.

Funds for the Segment C plan were redirected to a larger plan that's also meant to improve Johns Island traffic — turning the intersection of Main Road and U.S. Highway 17 into more of a highway-style interchange, to eliminate the backups and long delays there.

Funded through the half-percent sales tax approved in 2016, the Segment C plan had been budgeted to cost $75 million to $90 million, and all three segments of the Main Road Corridor plan were budgeted at $195 million. Instead, the contract for the intersection redesign came in above $350 million.

County officials noted that voters rejected a ballot measure in November that would have extended the half-percent sale tax to provide more road funding.

"It is safe to say that Segment C has gone with the referendum," County Council Chairman Kylon Middleton said at a recent council meeting.

Most of the money from the proposed tax continuation would have gone to the Mark Clark Extension, and that plan to continue Interstate 526 from West Ashley across Johns Island to James Island is now considered dead. The state and county have been in talks to unwind contractual agreements related to the Mark Clark.

But even if there were funding for the Segment C project, the county hasn't found a way to address residents' concerns about the unpopular plan.

"I think if they had the money they could come up with a plan," said island resident John Zlogar, who co-founded Rational Roads for Johns Island years ago because of concerns about the Segment C project. Early proposals included a cross-island parkway that was later abandoned in the face of opposition.

County officials aren't sure they can come up with a new notion residents would like. For example, Owsiak told council members that ending the widening of Bohicket Road at Plow Ground Road would result in a failing level of service — too much traffic congestion — at Edenvale Road, where the county's plan called for the widening to end.

Moving the planned multi-use path to the other side of Bohicket Road would create new right-of-way and environmental challenges, he said, and avoiding impacts on residential and business properties would be impossible, officials say.

The Main Road Corridor is a primary north-south route across the island, running from near the entrances to Kiawah and Seabrook islands on the south end to the intersection with U.S. Highway 17 in West Ashley on the north end.

It's two-lanes-wide and carries three names in segments: Main Road from U.S. Highway 17 to Maybank Highway, where the name changes to Bohicket Road until it hits River Road, where the name changes again to Betsy Kerrison Parkway.

Segment C is so-named because Charleston County divided a road project listed in the 2016 sales tax referendum into three parts. That project was the "US 17 at Main Road flyover and widening Main Road from Bees Ferry to Betsy Kerrison with (a) Parkway type section at Bohicket."

All of that work was expected to cost $195 million, but the price of a recently issued contract to design and build the U.S. Highway 17 interchange at Main Road came in at more than $354 million. That's Segment A.

The county previously decided against work on most of Main Road between U.S. Highway 17 and Maybank Highway. That would have been Segment B.

And now the rest of the Main Road Corridor, the stretch from Maybank Highway nearly to Kiawah Island, is also on hold.