Conway | South Carolina | Grand Strand Business | GrandStrandBusiness.com/Conway

Conway is a city in Horry County, South Carolina, and is in part of the area that is known as "The Grand Strand." The population was 17,103 at the 2010 census, and had an estimated population in 2016 of 22,761. It is the county seat of Horry County and is part of the Myrtle Beach metropolitan area. It is the home of Coastal Carolina University.

Numerous buildings and structures located in Conway are on the National Register of Historic Places. Among these is the City Hall building, designed by Robert Mills, architect of the Washington Monument. Since the completion of the Main Street USA project in the 1980s, Conway's downtown has been revitalized with shops and bistros. Highlighting the renovation of the downtown area is the Riverwalk, an area of fine dining which follows a stretch of the Waccamaw River that winds through Conway.

Conway is one of the oldest towns in South Carolina. Early English colonists named the village "Kings Town" but soon changed it to "Kingston". The town was founded in 1732 as part of Royal Governor Robert Johnson's Township Scheme. It was laid out on a bluff overlooking the Waccamaw River in what is now known as Horry County.

Many area residents fought in the American Revolution, and small engagements were fought near Kingston at Bear Bluff and at Black Lake. Francis Marion, who was known as the "Swamp Fox", had an encampment near Kingston just across the Waccamaw River. The areas of Kingston and Charles Town, S.C. were communities with a higher population of Tories than many other Colonial American towns during the revolutionary war era. A Tory was a colonist who supported England during that period.

After the war, patriotic citizens wanted to discard the name that honored Great Britain's King George II. The county's name was changed to Horry (pronounced "oh-ree") in honor of General Peter Horry in 1801, and a courthouse was established in Kingston. "Kingston" was later changed to "Conwayborough", for General Robert Conway. In 1883, the General Assembly changed the name to "Conway". Above Taken From Wikipedia