Sea breezes washed nutrients on crops planted on sand dunes, much as now is done through roots in hydroponic gardens, and cotton and tobacco thrived; farmers from Loris, Galivants Ferry, Florence and other Lowcountry towns bought land on the coast for practical reasons and then spent summers with their families there, rather than stay in the hellish heat and sand fleas of their main farms.

As a result, a few people subsequently built vacation homes in the first resort area, Murrells Inlet, and, later, erected rooming houses north in what would become Myrtle Beach.

As soon as it was possible after acquiring the property, the Ellsworths dug a yacht basin on the adjacent Intracoastal Waterway, on the land side of US Highway 17.

(The idea of capitalizing on the highway also motivated Jack Nelson who built the El Rancho Motel, once featured in Life Magazine, about ten miles (16 km) south.)

Ken and Ginny cut roads, layered them with coquina (a local mix of sand and fossilized shells), and looked for residents.

The location on the brow—like that of Patterson's home, on the opposite end of the property—was intended to provide both easy access to the shore and protection from storms (a plan that has worked until the present day).

They were followed by the Dutch van Buren family (distant descendants of the American President), who discovered the place by anchoring one night in the yacht basin on a trip south and then visiting the land, deciding to build a home and retire, which proved the wisdom of Ken Ellsworth's original scheme.

The van Burens told another Dutch family — Anton Frederik and Casperina Hermina Groeneveld Baarslag, friends of theirs from New York and Vermont — about the place, who visited and then moved down in 1950.

In 1951 Alfred Colby Hockings and his wife — he was a well-known illustrator for Field & Stream magazine, originally from Wisconsin but most recently living in the artists' community of Tryon, North Carolina — built a home up the street from the Gasques and Sorrys and across from the Baarslags; at almost the same time another Dutch family — Gerbrand and Nellie Poster, the son-in-law and daughter of the Baarslags — came down from New York City to visit her parents for Christmas, decided to stay, and built a home next door to her parents.

(Poster was later to found Coastal Federal Savings and Loan Association and use connections developed during his military service as a Dutch national in the US Army during World War II to help convince the US government to declare that the damage done by Hurricane Hazel in 1954 should be covered by insurance.

This changed the tenor of Briarcliffe by moving it from a retirement community to a third (less-expensive) alternative to the Pine Lakes and Dunes sections, all of which offered a place to rear a family close to, but not in, the increasing tawdriness of Myrtle Beach itself.

Many people in both groups chose Briarcliffe as a place in which to build or buy, ranging from Air Force heroes (such as Col. Francis ["Gabby"] Gabreski, the first pilot to be an "ace" in two wars) to investors, artists and simple families.

Among the significant people in this new wave must be remembered Rolf Bierens, another Dutchman who—having retired from General Motors thanks to his involvement in the design of their automatic transmission—first built his home with his own hands and then the first cabana.