Tour South Carolina's Living History, Storied Ruins, and Abandoned Haunts

If you’re looking for a place that holds pivotal pieces of our country’s identity, then look to South Carolina. The state (and before that, colony) was a key player in more or less every era of American history. And while you might know these seminal events best from textbooks or film, they take on a new meaning when you bear witness to the spaces and places where the history was made.

The region’s earliest exchanges were between European settlers and Native Americans, and between pirates such as Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet. Later, during the late Colonial Era, South Carolina was the site of the Stono Rebellion, one of the largest and most significant rebellions by enslaved people in U.S. history. Four decades later, during the Revolutionary War, it was home to more battles than any other royal colony (more than 200). And less than a century later, as the first state to secede from the Union, it stood witness to the firing of the first shots of the Civil War at Fort Sumter. 

So what of it all remains? 

A lot, it turns out. You can visit abandoned tunnels, twice-destroyed churches, 18th-century homes, and a bygone settlement. Explore the remains of a 19th-century brick-making empire, or examine a gothic-style bridge from 1820 built by the creator of the Washington Monument. Military history buffs will appreciate the Old Sheldon Church Ruins—first destroyed by the British, later destroyed in Sherman’s March to the Sea—as well as the Musgrove Mill Historic Site, a defunct gristmill where an important battle was fought and won by the underdog Patriots. As for once-majestic estates, there’s a now-derelict mansion built by the founder of Carhartt, as well as Drayton Hall, one of the country’s oldest unrestored plantation houses. For a quiet escape, there’s Dorchester, a Puritan ghost town deserted after the Revolutionary War. And as for a mix of historical plus modern, there’s an abandoned railroad project now repurposed as a cheese-aging cave.

Wherever in South Carolina you find yourself, you’ll hear history whispering around you—passing along the stories of a state where history is still standing.