Tourists at a beachfront property on Edisto Island in South Carolina uncovered human remains that local police think could date to a 19th-century community.

When the tourists found the remains on May 23, they thought they were fossils at first, the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office said, but once they figured out that they had uncovered human remains, they called the authorities.

The sheriff’s office said the place where the remains were found hosted a community called Edingsville Beach in the 19th century.

“Early indications suggest the remains may originate from a long-forgotten burial site,” the sheriff’s office said.

The remains have been sent to the Medical University of South Carolina for forensic analysis.

The community was once a vacation spot for rich Charleston residents looking to escape the seasonal heat, according to an article on an Edisto Island tourism website. Erosion, the Civil War and finally two hurricanes led to the community’s decline and disappearance.

In 2015, a Pennsylvania tourist and a former Edisto Beach State Park ranger found bones sticking out of the mud, some of them human and some belonging to a cow skeleton, that were dated to between 1865 and 1870, according to the website.

The former park ranger says the new bones could even predate Edingsville Beach’s founding in 1825.

“It could be something dating back 4,000 years to some of the more recent habitation of humans in the Lowcountry,” Ashby Gale told WCBD-TV.

• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.