Patriots Point & the USS Yorktown

The Yorktown is the reason to come. She is an 872-foot Essex-class carrier tied up on the Cooper River, and you tour her on your own: down through the crew berthing and the engine room, across a hangar bay the size of a warehouse, up ladders to the bridge, out onto a flight deck lined with aircraft. Nobody herds you. That freedom is the appeal and also the catch, because the ship was built for sailors in their twenties, not for anyone with bad knees.

The ship: USS Yorktown, CV-10

The first Yorktown, CV-5, was sunk at Midway in June 1942. Newport News was already building a replacement hull under a different name, and the Navy renamed her Yorktown before she was finished. She was commissioned on April 15, 1943.

She spent the rest of the war in the Pacific and earned eleven battle stars and a Presidential Unit Citation. In the 1950s she was rebuilt for jets, then converted again in 1957 into an anti-submarine carrier, which is the configuration she is in today. Five more battle stars came from Vietnam service between 1965 and 1968. In December 1968 she picked up the Apollo 8 crew and their capsule out of the Pacific after the first flight to circle the Moon, and there is a replica of that spacecraft aboard, wired to play the real mission audio.

The Navy decommissioned her in June 1970 and she was towed down from Bayonne, New Jersey to Charleston in 1975 to become the first aircraft carrier turned into a museum. Fifty years of salt water later, that is a maintenance job with no end, which is worth knowing before you judge the paint.

USS Laffey, and what else is on the site

Alongside the carrier is the USS Laffey (DD-724), an Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer commissioned in February 1944 at Bath Iron Works. She shelled Utah Beach on D-Day, then went to the Pacific. On April 16, 1945, off Okinawa, 22 Japanese aircraft attacked her in a single engagement. Her crew shot down nine of them. Thirty-two of the 336 men aboard were killed and 71 were wounded, and the ship did not sink, which is where the nickname comes from: the Ship That Would Not Die. Patriots Point calls her the most decorated surviving destroyer of the war. Aboard her, the Mount 53 exhibit walks through that attack gun by gun.

On land beside the ships is the Vietnam Experience Exhibit, two and a half acres laid out as a Brown Water Navy support base and a Marine artillery fire base in 1968, with a Quonset hut, a mess hall, an observation tower, a 105mm howitzer, five helicopters, and a river patrol boat. It uses holograms of Marine officers to narrate Khe Sanh and the Tet Offensive. It is outdoors, flat, and the most accessible part of the site.

Aboard the Yorktown you also get the Medal of Honor Museum, an interactive exhibit about recipients of the award, and more than two dozen aircraft split between the hangar bay and the flight deck. One thing older guidebooks get wrong: the submarine USS Clamagore is no longer here. Her hull had deteriorated past saving and she was towed to Norfolk for recycling in October 2022. If a submarine is what your kid came for, adjust expectations.

What a visit is actually like

The same complex holds Patriots Point Golf Links, a public harbor-side course, which makes it easy for a group to split a morning between the carrier and eighteen holes.

You park, buy tickets or scan the ones you bought online, and walk out to the ship. There is a golf cart shuttle from ticketing to the Yorktown if you want it. Onboard, start at the information desk in the hangar bay, where volunteers, many of them veterans, will point you at the numbered self-guided routes marked with arrows and signs. One route works the hangar deck and the exhibits off it. Another climbs to the captain's bridge, the admiral's bridge and the lookout platform. Others take you down into berthing, the galley, the engine room and the combat information center.

Be honest with yourself about the stairs. Warship ladders are steep, narrow, and metal, with handrails at an angle your hands do not expect, and there are a lot of them. Below the hangar bay the passageways are tight and the overheads are low enough to catch a tall adult's forehead. Wear closed shoes with grip. If you would find three flights of a steep staircase difficult, most of the ship below and above the hangar deck is not for you.

Accessibility, in the museum's own words: parts of both ships are not accessible. The Yorktown has an elevator that reaches the hangar bay level, the flight deck and the quarters, which covers the Medal of Honor Museum and more than half the aircraft. Free wheelchairs are available landside and at the ship's accessible entrance. The Laffey is not wheelchair accessible at all. The Vietnam Experience is. That combination makes a partial visit workable and a complete one impossible, so plan around the elevator route rather than being surprised at a hatch.

In summer, go at opening. The flight deck has no shade, the steel holds heat, and by early afternoon in July the ship is hard work. In a downpour the calculation reverses and Patriots Point becomes one of the better rainy-day options in Charleston, since the hangar bay and everything below it stay dry. The Vietnam Experience does not.

Two extras cost more than general admission. The Captain's Tour ($20 on top of admission) is a guided walk into restricted spaces. The Admiral's Tour is $40 per person, 90 minutes, ages 12 and up. Bulldog Tours also runs after-hours ghost tours aboard the Yorktown, which land somewhere between naval history and the city's ghost tour circuit. And Operation Overnight lets groups sleep in bunks under the aircraft in the hangar bay, which is the Scout-troop and school-group version of this place.

Is it worth it?

It depends entirely on who you are bringing.

If anyone in the group is into military history, aviation, or machinery for its own sake, this is one of the best half-days in the Charleston area and arguably underpriced at $28. There is no other place in the Southeast where you can walk a carrier's flight deck, stand on the bridge, and then go down four levels into the engineering spaces at your own pace. Kids who like big machines tend to love it, and the site earns its spot in our Charleston with kids guide for exactly that reason.

If nobody in the group is that person, be honest about it. Our things to do in Charleston guide puts it plainly: unless you are a naval history enthusiast, Patriots Point takes more time than the USS Yorktown alone warrants. A gray ship full of gray compartments and interpretive panels is a long afternoon if the subject does not grab you, and you will have spent 4 hours plus parking plus the bridge crossing to get there. The same half day downtown buys a walking tour, the Battery, and a proper lunch.

The middle path, if you are unsure: arrive at 10 am, do the hangar bay, the flight deck and the Medal of Honor Museum in about 90 minutes, skip the deep engineering spaces, and leave. You will have seen the ship without exhausting anyone.

Getting there, parking, and the Fort Sumter ferry

From downtown, take Highway 17 north over the Ravenel Bridge, merge onto Coleman Boulevard, and turn right at the first light onto Patriots Point Road. It is about ten minutes without traffic and considerably more at rush hour. Parking is managed separately from the museum and costs $5.50 an hour with a $25 daily cap, paid through Palmetto Parking, which texts you before your time runs out. Budget for it: a four-hour visit adds about $22 to a family's day.

Without a car, the Charleston Water Taxi stops at Patriots Point on an hourly loop that also serves Waterfront Park and the Maritime Center downtown. A day pass is $17 for adults and $15 for kids, one way is $13, and it is a pleasant harbor crossing in its own right. The narrated sightseeing boats pass the Yorktown on every run too; our harbor cruise guide compares them. And the rest of a day on this side of the water — Shem Creek, the bridge walk, Boone Hall — is in the Mount Pleasant guide.

The other reason people end up here is the ferry. Fort Sumter Tours runs boats to Fort Sumter from the Patriots Point dock at 10:45 am and 1:30 pm from late February through November, dropping to a single midday departure in winter. Tickets are $43 for adults. Patriots Point itself is not affiliated with the ferry operator, and museum admission does not include it.

Can you do both in one day? Yes, but understand what you are signing up for: the ferry round trip is about 2 hours 15 minutes, the museum is 3 to 4, and that is a full day of walking, standing, and sun with paid parking running the whole time. If you try it, take the 10:45 boat first and hit the ship afterward, since the museum stops selling tickets at 4 pm. One accessibility note that catches people out: the ferry ramps shift with the tide, and the operator says boarding from downtown or Patriots Point is not always fully accessible. Call 843-722-2628 on the day if that matters.

Once you are in Mount Pleasant, Shem Creek and its waterfront restaurants are five minutes away, and Boone Hall is another ten up Highway 17. Prices and hours here move, so confirm the day's details at patriotspoint.org before you drive over, and see the rest of our Charleston attraction guides if you are still building the day.