The advent of Brookgreen Gardens was not man’s first effort to impose his will on the wild marshes of the Waccamaw neck. Far from it. But how one of the most comprehensive collections of American sculptural art came to be here exists as an enduring tale of Southern aristocracy—one that goes back several centuries and encompasses the travails and triumphs of privileged families who made, lost, and regained their fortunes along these marshy Murrells Inlet banks.