Bill Reynolds

Beaufort Tours

story by MICAH PEPPERS
photos by JOHN WOLLWERTH  and courtesy of BEAUFORT TOURS

Beaufort Tours owner Bill Reynolds moved to Greenville, South Carolina, to attend Furman University and loved our beautiful state so much he has been here ever since. At Furman, he began reading the classics and, for pleasure, opened some Pat Conroy books. He graduated in 1981, and two years later, his sister-in-law graduated from Furman. He attended her graduation, and it turned out that Pat Conroy was the commencement speaker.

While at Furman, Bill did a semester abroad in Versailles, where he was immersed in French language and culture. He followed this up by moving to Columbia and earning a Master of International Business from the University of South Carolina, which included an internship with DuPont in Geneva and Paris. Years later, he met his wife, Russi, in a French cooking class. The couple would frequently visit friends who lived in Beaufort, and during this time, he fell in love with the area. “If I had known how beautiful Beaufort was, I would have moved here a lot sooner,” Bill stated.

Bill and Russi bought a house on St. Helena Island in 2008 to spend the weekends. He had started a Hewlett Packard dealership in Columbia in 1990, taking on a business partner in 2003. Several years later, he knew his business partner would eventually buy his share of the business, so he started looking for business opportunities in Beaufort. As Bill drove around town, he kept noticing all the famous movie locations here in Beaufort and decided to incorporate them into his new endeavor. This was when Beaufort Tours was established.

When Beaufort Tours first began, it was mostly focused on showing off the beautiful town and movie location sites, but over time, it expanded. “Guests really wanted the history of Beaufort,” Bill explains. “I actually didn’t even originally plan on giving the tours but learned from my tour guides and began offering them myself.”

Beaufort Tours now offers a myriad of tours that will suit any guest’s preference. The History and Movie Tour by Golf Cart is one of the most popular tours. “We take our guests around different sites and homes where celebrities have visited and lived in downtown Beaufort. We go by the National Cemetery, where The Great Santini was buried, and the Gump Medical Center. And, of course, the bridge from Forrest Gump because you can’t drive by that bridge on a tour without talking about Forrest Gump.” The tour travels throughout the downtown Lowcountry, driving by pre-Civil War houses and under the stunning live oaks covered with Spanish moss.

Another popular tour is the Pat Conroy’s Beaufort tour. This hour-and-a-quarter tour partners up with the Pat Conroy Literary Center to offer up to seven guests the opportunity to visit sites that played an important part in Conroy’s life, including homes where he lived and wrote, his father and mother’s gravesites, and various locations connected to the filming of The Great Santini and The Prince of Tides. “We have to bring Kleenex on the tour because sometimes people have a very emotional reaction to seeing the sites,” Bill states. After the tour, guests are invited to the Conroy Center to observe artifacts from Conroy’s life, such as The Great Santini’s flight jacket and a handwritten prologue to The Prince of Tides.

Beaufort Tours offers walking tours for those who want to just stretch out on foot. The Complete Walking History/Movie Tour will take their guests by historic homes in neighborhoods such as The Bluff and The Pointe. Those on the tour will have the opportunities to learn about the houses built of tabby and stroll underneath the Spanish moss draping live oaks. They will learn about movie sets, like the house where Demi Moore stayed while filming G.I. Jane or where Barbara Streisand stayed while filming The Prince of Tides.

Going into the new year, Beaufort Tours is not slowing down. “Before COVID, we had plans to expand into Charleston, but the pandemic stopped that,” Bill explains. “When tourists started to travel again in 2021, business really started picking up. We already have 300 planned tours for 2023.” When asked what days they are closed, Bill laughs. “We don’t close. We are open every day, including Thanksgiving and Christmas. On top of tourists or locals in the area, guests coming off the cruise ships take our tours. We have advanced tours booked daily, and on the rare occasion we don’t have any advanced tickets sold, we will close, but I think that has only happened twice this year.”

When not showing guests around the Lowcountry, Bill enjoys being active in the community. Bill is the current president of the Beaufort French Club. “Many people don’t realize how diverse and international Beaufort is. We have French, German, and Italian friends from all over. Besides being the most beautiful town I’ve ever seen, the people are just amazing here.” He and his wife also have three children and five grandchildren they enjoy visiting.

So how does someone go about getting on one of the Beaufort Tours? Bill explains, “The easiest way to get signed on is to visit our website, beauforttours.com. There you can pick exactly what you’re looking for, and we would love to have anyone interested join.”