Burroughs & Chapin

Burroughs & Chapin Company, Inc., was formed in 1990 when the century-old Burroughs & Collins Company of Conway merged with Myrtle Beach Farms Company. Headquartered in Myrtle Beach and holding tens of thousands of acres throughout Horry County, Burroughs & Chapin is dedicated to coastal economic development and attracting new businesses to Myrtle Beach and the Grand Strand. The firm is the linear descendant of the business partnership formed in 1895 by Franklin Burroughs and B. G. Collins. In 1912 Simeon B. Chapin, a Chicago financier, joined Burroughs’s sons to form Myrtle Beach Farms Company. Pairing Chapin’s money and business expertise with the Burroughs brothers’ vast land holdings, Myrtle Beach Farms led Horry County through an extended period of robust economic growth and development for Myrtle Beach, the Grand Strand, and Horry County.

The company, however, has not been without controversy. Its development of Grand Strand properties for commercial and residential uses has been criticized for encroachment on crucial coastal habitats. In 1999 the company and four partners purchased 4,600 acres along the Congaree River in Richland County, where they planned to create a mixed commercial/residential development called “Green Diamond.” Many groups and individuals opposed the development as environmentally dangerous. After an extensive public relations campaign and an unsuccessful lawsuit against the Federal Emergency Management Agency over the accuracy of a federal flood map of the site, Burroughs & Chapin failed to win approval for the ambitious project. By April 2003 the chairman of the board admitted, “Green Diamond is no longer a possibility.”