The 20,000-acre tract known as Palmetto Bluff extends from the headwaters of the May River near the town of Bluffton, skirts the back sides of Bull and Daufuskie Islands via the Cooper River to its east, and gives way finally to the ancient freshwater fields of the New River along its western edge. For more than a century, "the Bluff " has been known to a privileged few as one of the wildest and most beautiful places in the South Carolina Lowcountry—itself an area known widely as one of the most picturesque in the world.