843 Area Code – Charleston, South Carolina: Location, Time Zone & History

South Carolina's Lowcountry and Grand Strand carry area code 843, created effective March 22, 1998, when it split off from area code 803. The new code took the state's fast-growing coastal and northeastern regions -- Charleston, Myrtle Beach, Beaufort, Hilton Head, and Florence -- while 803 kept the central Midlands around Columbia.

Growth along the coast pushed 843 toward exhaustion within about fifteen years. The South Carolina Public Service Commission approved 854 as an all-services overlay in 2013, and it entered service on March 14, 2015 -- the state's first overlay code -- with mandatory ten-digit local dialing following that September.

Charleston's historic district, with its antebellum architecture, is one of the country's premier heritage-tourism draws, and Fort Sumter in the harbor is where the Civil War's first shots were fired in 1861. The Lowcountry's Sea Islands preserve a distinct Gullah Geechee culture and language rooted in West African heritage. Alongside tourism, the region anchors serious industry:

• Boeing's 787 final assembly line in North Charleston
• Mercedes-Benz Vans in Ladson and Volvo Cars in Ridgeville
• The Port of Charleston, among the busiest container ports on the East Coast
• The Medical University of South Carolina and The Citadel