The year 1670 rings a bell for most people who grew up in the Palmetto State. If you’re one of them, then take yourself back in time to that middle school social studies class (probably around the eighth grade) where you spent the better part of the year studying South Carolina history. Is 1670 ringing a bell now? We all learned 1670 is when the oldest town in South Carolina was founded: Charles Town (now Charleston). And this is true, technically. But wait, Charleston was not the first settlement in the state. Not by a long shot. The very first settlement in South Carolina was founded on the Winyah Bay right about where we find the state’s third oldest city: Georgetown.

If you’re a bit confused, hang in there… it’s all about to become crystal clear:

Sometime between 1521 and 1526 a Spanish explorer by the name of Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón sailed into what is now Winyah Bay and founded the very first settlement in the New World.
Richard McMillin / iStock / Getty Images Plus Collection via Getty Images
It was called San Miguel de Gualdape.
Google/Jennifer Taylor
No hard evidence of exactly where the settlement was exists. But it could have been anywhere from where the bay exits into the Atlantic (by the present day Georgetown Light) all the way up to the top of Winyah Bay, where we now find the southeastern quadrant of the city of Georgetown.
Google/Josh Mullen
Winyah Bay is an estuary. It gets its name from an ancient Native American tribe that inhabited the area at the time the first settlement was established — the Winyaw Indians.
Wikipedia/OAA - http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/htmls/nerr0313.htm
It's formed by the confluence of the Black River, the Pee Dee River, the Sampit River, and the Waccamaw River.

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It's hard to say what Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón and his crew and settlers found when they entered the bay.
Google/Lon Schultz
But we can only imagine it was as breathtaking as it is today. No wonder they wanted to create America's first settlement here!
But alas, things did not go as planned.
AleksandarNakic / E+ Collection via Getty Images
No one really knows why, but Ayllón pulled his 500 settlers out of the area only a month after they'd settled here. If you're thinking there was trouble with America's rightful first settlers, the Native Americans, then your guess is as good as anyone's. The Winyaw Indians that were present had all but disappeared by the time Charles Town was settled. There is some speculation that they folded into the Waccamaw nation.
And Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón's 500 settlers he pulled out of Winyah Bay?
Google/Aaron Azen
They ended up putting down roots just down the coast in Georgia. However, within two months all but 150 of them had died from a disease that raged through the settlement.
Google/Nancy Smith

After only two months in their new settlement in (present day) Georgia, Ayllón put everyone still alive on a ship bound for Spain. Nearly 150 years later, in 1670, the Europeans landed upstream on the Ashley River in what is now Charleston. Although it’s technically the oldest town in the state, it’s technically not the very first settlement in what is now South Carolina. A few other unsuccessful attempts to settle in what is now South Carolina were made in the years between Ayllón’s departure in 1526 and the founding of Charles Town in 1670.

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