Mount Pleasant is a large suburban town in Charleston County, South Carolina, United States.

The Ravenel Bridge, an eight-lane highway that is part of U.S. Route 17 and was completed in 2005, spans the Cooper River and links Mount Pleasant with the city of Charleston.

[9] The site of Mount Pleasant was originally occupied by the Sewee people, an Algonquian language-speaking tribe.

The first European settlers arrived from England on July 6, 1680, under the leadership of Captain Florentia O'Sullivan.

Captain O'Sullivan had been granted 2,340 acres (950 ha), which included not only the island later named for him, but also the future site of Mount Pleasant.

Its access to deep water and abundance of good timber made it ideal for the development of a prosperous shipbuilding enterprise.

Lands adjacent to Hobcaw Point were owned at different times by several different English families, many of which maintained ferries which served Mount Pleasant.

On September 24, 1860, a public meeting was held in Mount Pleasant; it resulted in the first secession resolution passed in the state.

The city was defended by a line of fortifications from Elliot's Creek at Boone Hall to Copahee Sound.

Mount Pleasant was the secret training ground for the nine-man crew of the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley.

The original plank-and-barrel footbridge, later known as the Pitt Street Bridge at the foot of the Old Village area in Mount Pleasant, was used by the crew of the H.L.

A generation later, in 1929 a steel drawbridge was built for vehicle access between Sullivan's Island and Mount Pleasant.

Robert Scanlon, a freedman carpenter, purchased the 614-acre (248 ha) property known as Remley's Plantation, bordering Charleston harbor along the Wando River in Mount Pleasant.

The Charleston Land Company and Scanlonville are one of four known cooperative real estate development ventures among African-American freedmen after the Civil War.

During the Jim Crow years of much of the 20th century, this was known as the largest and oldest of five "black beaches" in Charleston County.

Riverside officially opened in 1930 and featured a dance pavilion, athletics field, bathhouse, playground, and a boardwalk along the Wando River.

Riverside Pavilion was the only venue where black city residents could see African-American musical legends such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, B.B.

Music performances at the Pavilion spawned juke joints, or night clubs, in Scanlonville and eventually a hotel called White's Paradise.

It eventually sold the property to a real estate company, which developed this area as a private gated community.

Over time, the town limits have pushed northeastward from the Old Village area 24 miles (39 km) along U.S. Route 17, nearly as far as Awendaw.

Mount Pleasant is growing in commercial retail stores, boutiques, including: The Auld Mound, Buzzard's Island Site, Christ Church, Cook's Old Field Cemetery, Long Point Plantation (38CH321), Lucas Family Cemetery, Mount Pleasant Historic District, Oakland Plantation House, Old Berkeley County Courthouse, Paul Pritchard Shipyard, Remley Point Cemetery, Slave Street, Smokehouse, and Allee, Boone Hall Plantation, Charles Pinckney National Historic Site, USS Laffey (DD-724), and USS Yorktown (CV-10) are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

As of August 2021, the town council is composed of the mayor (Will Haynie) and eight at-large council members (Howard R. Chapman, P.E., Brenda Corley, Laura Hyatt, Kathy Landing, Tom O’Rouke, Jake Rambo, Gary Santos, and Guang Ming Whitley).

In 2007, under the supervision of Chief Herb Williams and Captain Robert Wronski, the Mount Pleasant Fire Department established a "Paramedic Engine" program, in which firefighters trained as Paramedics will carry the same equipment on the fire engines as in the ambulances.

This means in the event Charleston County EMS is delayed, the Mount Pleasant Fire Department will be able to provide life-saving procedures until the ambulance arrives.

The Mount Pleasant Police Department, a 2006 CALEA Flagship Award recipient,[28] employs 132 sworn officers and 43 civilian personnel, serving the entire municipal population.

The police department, which is a nationally accredited agency, sanctioned by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, has adopted the problem-oriented policing philosophy of service delivery, which requires officers to work together with citizens to identify community problems, determine the underlying cause, and develop solutions which address these causes in order to resolve the problem.

Led by Chief Carl Ritchie, the police response time to the majority of the calls for service beats the national average.