Beaufort Naval Hospital was opened May 1949 to replace Parris Island Hospital.

The site of NH Beaufort was once Fort Frederick, an English fort at Port Royal, near the border of the English colony of South Carolina and Georgia, keeping an eye on the Spanish colony of Florida to the south. In the Civil War a Confederate camp, Camp Saxton, was established in this same general area. Later in the Civil War the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, one of the first all black regiments for the Union, camped here.

Since 1949 NH Beaufort has provided care for Navy and Marine ill and injured from all causes, in peace and in war.