The story of Hobcaw Barony begins in 1718, when John, Lord Carteret received a royal grant of barony on Hobcaw Point at the southern end of Waccamaw Neck. By the 1760s, the tract had been surveyed and sold in parcels that became roughly a dozen rice plantations. Georgetown County's position at the confluence of five rivers flowing into Winyah Bay made it ideal for tidal rice cultivation, a labor-intensive system that depended entirely on enslaved labor. Between the American Revolution and the Civil War, Georgetown County produced more rice than any other district in North America. The intricate network of canals, dikes, and trunk gates that controlled the flow of tidal water into the rice fields represented an extraordinary feat of hydraulic engineering - much of it designed and built by enslaved Africans drawing on rice cultivation knowledge from their homelands in West Africa. After the Civil War, without enslaved labor and facing competition from Louisiana, rice production on the Waccamaw Neck collapsed.

When Bernard Baruch acquired Hobcaw between 1905 and 1907, the rice fields had been abandoned for decades. Rather than restoring cultivation, Baruch recognized that the old canals and embankments created ideal habitat for waterfowl, and he developed the estate as a premier hunting retreat. Baruch was no ordinary sportsman. Born in Camden, South Carolina, in 1870, he had become one of the most powerful figures on Wall Street before turning to public service. He chaired the War Industries Board during World War I, managing the nation's economic mobilization. During World War II, he advised Roosevelt on industrial production. At Hobcaw, away from Washington's scrutiny, Baruch hosted the powerful and the prominent. The property became an informal extension of American statecraft, a place where policy was shaped over quail hunts and long evenings on the veranda. More than 37 historic buildings and structures survive on the property, spanning three centuries of use.

Belle Baruch was not a typical debutante. Fluent in French, an accomplished equestrian who competed internationally, and a licensed pilot who built her own small airport on the property, she was fiercely independent. Beginning in 1936, she started buying Hobcaw from her father, acquiring 5,000 acres in the northern portion first and building the Bellefield Plantation complex - a two-story frame house designed by Murgatroyd and Ogden of New York, set on a raised terrace beneath live oaks and pines, with grounds laid out by landscape architect Umberto Innocenti. By 1956, Belle owned all of Hobcaw Barony. When she died in 1964, she left the entire 16,000 acres to the Belle W. Baruch Foundation with a single directive: preserve it for nature and research. Today, the University of South Carolina operates the Baruch Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences on the property, and Clemson University runs the Belle W. Baruch Institute of Coastal Ecology and Forest Science.

In 2003, the Bellefield House was the scene of an art theft that would take over a decade to resolve. Former curator Sammy McIntosh, whose contract had not been renewed, departed on his last night with several valuable artworks. Deputies recovered a stolen print by John Leache, valued at roughly $12,000, from McIntosh's home three weeks later. He pleaded no contest and received three years' probation. But the most significant pieces remained missing: a Sir Alfred Munnings portrait of Belle Baruch with her horse Souriant, two related studies, and seven John James Audubon prints. The Baruch Foundation posted a $25,000 reward. An Antiques Roadshow episode in February 2013 generated public interest but no leads. The break came in 2016, when auctioneers John and Patty Ivy of Laurens, South Carolina, were hired to sell an estate's contents and recognized the artist's name. They contacted a Converse College professor who had done architectural work at Hobcaw, and the paintings were returned to the Foundation.

Hobcaw Barony was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 2, 1994, recognizing its significance across three centuries of South Carolina history. The Belle W. Baruch Foundation and the North Inlet-Winyah Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve jointly operate the Hobcaw Barony Discovery Center, offering tours and educational programs. The old rice field infrastructure - canals, banks, and trunks - has been maintained across much of the property, preserving a physical record of the plantation era's engineering. Portions of the Alderley, Oryzantia, Youngfield, Bellefield, Strawberry Hill, Michaux, and Calais plantations remain largely intact. The property now serves as a living laboratory for understanding how coastal ecosystems respond to climate change, sea-level rise, and land-use history. What began as a royal grant, became a rice kingdom, transformed into a millionaire's retreat, and ended as a scientist's preserve - the land outlasting every human ambition imposed upon it.