Classic Carolina Road Trips

Editor’s note: Classic Road Trips From Columbia can be found at Uptown Gifts, Mast General, and Books A Million.

 

By Tom Poland

Explore South Carolina. Find Her Hidden Gems.

 

In the course of working on several South Carolina books with photographer Robert Clark I’ve explored many places off the beaten path. We make expeditions to places known and unknown and whenever we can, we explore sandy lanes and weed-choked, rutted lanes. We trudge through fields and woods too to see what they hide. That’s how we found the magnificent Calhoun Mill in McCormick County. For well over a year now I’ve been photographing and writing day trip columns about the state’s hidden gems, places like the Walhalla Fish Hatchery, the Chapel of Ease, and things like driving through peach country.

You don’t have to make trips to cliché beach venues as the masses do. Break out of the crowd and do something different. A class of venues exists that’s nowhere as known as Myrtle Beach. Landsford Canal and Brattonsville fall into that realm. Some trips never occur to some such as driving up US Highway 1 north into North Carolina. Make that journey and you drive back into the 1950s.

Make a trip to western South Carolina and you’ll find that places like Abbeville and McCormick counties are rich with hidden gems. Check out the haunted Badwell Cemetery and old French Huguenot country.

Each week I write up a new adventure. I never run out of material. It was inevitable that these adventures would end up in a book. Thanks to an email inquiry from an editor at the History Press in Charleston, sixty-two of my road trip chronicles were published in a book, Classic Carolina Road Trips From Columbia. I organized the trips into four sections. “Make It an Overnighter” (151 miles away or farther), “Gas Up and Hit the Road” (101 to 150 miles away), “A Hop, Skip, and a Jump” (51 to 100 miles away), and “Just Around the Corner” (50 miles or less). I used the State House address as a central point for mapquesting distances. Each trip has an “If You Go” sidebar that provides a link to more information, a phone number, and information such as fees, hours of operation.

The popularity of this guide surprises me. People with a sense of adventure are snapping it up. The American road trip is alive and well. Places like the Oconee Station Historic Site, Charleston Tea Plantation, Old French Huguenot Country, and the Kings Highway make for excellent adventures.

As I wrote in the foreword, “While cachet comes with saying you’ve traveled to Venice, Paris, and other fashionable venues, it’s surprising how many historic places are within driving range. In the course of writing seven books about South Carolina, I’ve been to spots and secret places with appeal all their own, and I’ve learned something: you don’t have to go abroad to experience marvelous places nor do you need to flock to the clichéd “must see” venues. Rustic beauty, natural areas, history, and interesting sights and places surround the Midlands.”

Here then are two excerpts from the book.

 

Oconee Station Historic Site

See The Majesty Of Falling Water

Each March 1, a destination with history and natural allure opens. Get some comfortable walking shoes and a stout hiking stick and head to the northwest corner. In one trip you’ll see 18^th and 19^th Century South Carolina while enjoying spring wildflowers, cool air, low humidity, and stunning mountain vistas covered in splendid shades of new-leaf green. Rocks, water, and nature. It’s all here.

You’ll see an old military compound, Oconee Station, which became a trading post. See this solid enduring stone blockhouse that the South Carolina State Militia used as an outpost from around 1792 to 1799. The blockhouse was built as a haven from Indian attacks. Thirty of the “hardiest and best hunters” defended the blockhouse. See too the nearby William Richards House.

 

Here you’ll get a beautiful mix of history, nature, and outdoor recreation. A 1.5-mile nature trail connects hikers to a trail leading into Sumter National Forest that ends at Station Cove Falls. Camp at nearby Oconee State Park if you like before summer heat and pesky insects arrive. The park has rustic, CCC-era cabins and a lake with a swimming hole. You can rent a canoe and fish. Hike wooded nature trails that wind through the foothills region. Trails connect with the Foothills Trail, South Carolina’s 80-mile wilderness hike on the Blue Ridge Escarpment. One trail connects Oconee Station with Oconee State Park.

Particularly rewarding is the hike to Oconee Station Falls, known also as Station Cove Falls. I hiked it one summer afternoon and though it seems longer than it is (.7 mile) on a hot day the falls at the end make the effort worth it. I find Oconee Station Falls to be one of the state’s more beautiful falls. The hike take’s 25 minutes to half an hour and as you walk you’re moving through a mountain cove forest. Crossing a sandy stream I saw what a huge cat print and both bobcat and mountain lion crossed my mind. When you get to the falls, its 60-foot stepped plummet makes you stare. Go on a spring day. Look for wild flowers such as trillium, mayapple, pink lady’s slipper orchids, bloodroot, and redbud. Take a picnic lunch and relax at the boulders at the base of the falls.

 

Rediscover The Old South

In The High Hills of Santee

There’s an old road that makes for a great Sunday drive, SC Highway 261. You’ll see historic sites; feel you are in the mountains, yet feel you are at the coast. More than that you’ll come across the ghosts of history. A historical marker greets travelers, saying, “Over it came Indians, pack animals laden with hides, drovers, rolled hogsheads of produce, wagoners, and stagecoaches. The armies of two wars passed over it.” Some called it the King’s Highway.

State Route 261 winds through the High Hills of Santee. This area is rural, isolated, and heartbreakingly antebellum. The land plunges opening up vistas of distant ridges. You think at once of the mountains. It’s a curious sight to see Spanish moss in the mountains but Highway 261 gives you massive oaks with limbs draped in Spanish moss.

You’ll find enough history here to fill several good-sized books. For starters there’s the Church of the Holy Cross. This stately old church was built from 1850 to 1852 of rammed earth. In its old cemetery lies Joel Roberts Poinsett, the man who brought us the poinsettia. A ways down the road off the beaten path you’ll come across the grave of General Thomas Sumter, the “Carolina Gamecock.” He earned his nickname when he killed British soldiers for burning down his house.

Those of you who recall Ken Burn’s Civil War documentary will recognize the name Mary Boykin Chestnut. She grew up in Stateburg a stone’s throw from Route 261. Mary Boykin Chesnut published her Civil War diary as a “vivid picture of a society in the throes of its life-and-death struggle.”

Along Route 261 you’ll find the hamlet of Boykin Mill Pond and its quaint old church, the Swift Creek Church. In May 1860 approximately 75 young people met at Boykin Mill pond to picnic right near the church. Late that afternoon 30 or more crowded onto a flatboat, overturning it. Close to 25 young people drowned, mostly women. You’ll find an old mill here too. Boykin Mill and its 100-year-old turbines long preserved a time when mills provided communities cornmeal, grits, and flour. A few steps away is the Broom Place where Susan Simpson makes sturdy, colorful brooms the old-fashioned way.

 

High Hills of Santee Baptist Church

 

As you drive along the winding oak-shaded lane summon up images of a horse and buggy with men in powdered wigs and women in colonial attire. Then visualize a regiment of Confederates marching down the road, the dust rising around their feet. Imagine Mary Boykin Chestnut seeing the men and reaching for her diary as all, one by one, vanish into the eternal mists we call history. You’ve rediscovered the Old South and it’s just a short drive away.

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Sixty other adventures await you. Fall’s a great time to explore the Northwest Corner. Gas up and hit the road!

 

Visit Tom Poland’s website at www.tompoland.net
Email Tom about most anything. [email protected]

Tom Poland is the author of eight books and more than 700 magazine features. A Southern writer, his work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. The University of South Carolina Press has released his and Robert Clark’s book, Reflections Of South Carolina, Vol. II. The History Press of Charleston just released his book, Classic Carolina Road Trips From Columbia. He writes a weekly column for newspapers in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and ch