The Shem Creek Bridge

First bridged 1937 · Coleman Blvd, Mt. Pleasant

Every creek has a place where the land decides to let the water through. On Shem Creek it is the low span on Coleman Boulevard — the bridge you cross without thinking, traffic humming over the marsh while the trawlers idle below. It looks like nothing. It is the reason any of the rest of it is here.

Find the Creek

The Story

The Span That Made the Creek

In 1930, Captain William Magwood became the first fisherman to bring ocean shrimp into Mount Pleasant. Seven years later, in 1937, a bridge was built over Shem Creek — and that crossing opened the banks. The first shrimp dock followed, then the ice houses and the seafood companies, until the whole creek had turned itself over to the work of the trawlers. The road carried other names before the town renamed it Coleman Boulevard in 1958, for Mayor Francis Coleman, who steered Mount Pleasant through its postwar years. The bridge has been remade and modernized in the decades since, but its job hasn’t changed: it is still the seam where the boulevard meets the marsh.

The Bridge

The particulars

What: The bridge carrying Coleman Boulevard over Shem Creek
First bridged: 1937, seven years after ocean shrimp came to the creek
The road: Named Coleman Boulevard in 1958, for Mayor Francis Coleman
Alongside: A 2,200-foot boardwalk runs from the bridge toward the harbor
On foot: A pedestrian bridge opened beside it in 2019
Now named: The walkway honors Captain Wayne Magwood, named October 2020

What it opened

A Working Waterfront

Cross the bridge today and the creek fans out on either side — dock restaurants, seafood markets, the 2,200-foot boardwalk running toward the harbor, and the newer pedestrian bridge stitched in alongside the highway. That walkway opened in 2019 so people could finally cross off the narrow Coleman sidewalk; the next year, in October 2020, the town named it for shrimp-boat Captain Wayne Magwood. The water has always been the through-line here. An early ferry connected Haddrell’s Point to Charleston as far back as 1770, long before anyone thought to lay a road across the marsh.

First bridged

1937

The crossing that opened Shem Creek to its docks and ice houses.

On foot

Since 2019

A pedestrian bridge, named for Captain Wayne Magwood in 2020.

The boardwalk

2,200 feet

Running from the bridge on Coleman out toward the harbor.