Reconstruction Era National Historical Park
A downtown visitor center connects Penn Center, Camp Saxton, Brick Baptist Church, Darrah Hall, and Beaufort sites where emancipation, education, land, citizenship, and backlash were contested.
United States: places and wildlife — page 59
Browse the published Explore collection for United States. Open a discovery for its field guide, practical details, and background.
Ninety Six National Historic Site
A one-mile loop reaches the original 1781 Star Fort, siege trenches, reconstructed stockade, village traces, and the site of two Revolutionary War battles.
Cowpens National Battlefield
Trails, exhibits, a reconstructed road, and open ground interpret Daniel Morgan’s layered defense and the rapid Patriot victory of January 1781.
Kings Mountain National Military Park
A 1.5-mile loop climbs the wooded ridge where Patriot militia surrounded and defeated Loyalist forces in October 1780.
Historic Camden Revolutionary War Site
Restored and reconstructed structures, archaeology, exhibits, and trails interpret Camden’s British occupation, military logistics, trade, and nearby battlefields.
Penn Center
The former Penn School campus preserves classrooms, cottages, photographs, craft traditions, civil-rights history, and a landscape central to Gullah community life since 1862.
Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon
The 1771 Exchange, Great Hall, archaeological basement, and guided Provost tour interpret customs, slave trading, Patriot imprisonment, ratification, and Charleston government.
Drayton Hall
The remarkably preserved eighteenth-century house, landscape, African American cemetery, and archaeology reveal Palladian ambition alongside plantation slavery and long stewardship.
Middleton Place
Terraced gardens, stableyards, surviving architecture, rice history, livestock, and interpretation of generations of enslaved people occupy an Ashley River plantation landscape.
McLeod Plantation Historic Site
A main house, extant dwellings, gin house, fields, and riverside landscape support interpretation centered on enslaved people, emancipation, Reconstruction, tenancy, and Gullah Geechee continuity.
Redcliffe Plantation State Historic Site
An 1859 Greek Revival mansion, slave quarters, lane, furnishings, and extensive family papers interpret the Hammond household, enslaved workers, and postwar life.
Historic Brattonsville
More than thirty structures, farm fields, archaeological sites, livestock, and programs interpret the Bratton family, enslaved communities, Revolutionary fighting, and later agriculture.
Colonial Dorchester State Historic Site
Church-tower ruins, a tabby fort, cemetery, streets, wharf traces, and archaeology mark a trading town established on the Ashley River in 1697.
Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site
Archaeology, a visitor center, reconstructed ship, fortifications, gardens, trails, and an animal forest interpret the 1670 settlement along the Ashley River.
Congaree National Park
Boardwalks, paddling routes, champion trees, sloughs, and floodplain forest protect one of the largest remaining expanses of old-growth bottomland hardwoods in the Southeast.
ACE Basin National Wildlife Refuge
The Ashepoo, Combahee, and Edisto rivers meet tidal marsh, forest, managed rice impoundments, and former plantation lands within a nationally significant conservation partnership.
Sassafras Mountain Overlook
A short paved approach reaches a 3,553-foot summit overlook with layered Blue Ridge views into South Carolina and North Carolina.
Angel Oak Tree
A massive Southern live oak spreads limbs across a shaded city park, its age measured less reliably than its continuing biological and cultural presence.
Botany Bay Plantation Heritage Preserve
A driving loop, marshes, plantation ruins, maritime forest, and a walk to a shell-covered boneyard beach reveal a protected barrier-island landscape in motion.
Hunting Island State Park
Five miles of beach, maritime forest, lagoon, marsh, trails, and South Carolina’s publicly accessible historic lighthouse create the state’s most visited park.
Huntington Beach State Park
Freshwater and brackish impoundments, beach, maritime habitat, boardwalks, and Atalaya—the Huntingtons’ Moorish-influenced home and studio complex—share one coastal park.
Table Rock State Park
A CCC-built park below Table Rock Mountain offers lakes, historic structures, waterfalls, and strenuous routes to Table Rock, Pinnacle Mountain, and the Foothills Trail.
Jones Gap State Park
The Middle Saluda River, trout habitat, waterfalls, and an extensive trail network cross a narrow mountain valley within the Mountain Bridge Wilderness Area.
Devils Fork State Park
The principal public gateway to Lake Jocassee offers swimming, paddling, boating, camping, short trails, and access to waterfall-lined mountain coves.
Caesars Head State Park
A roadside overlook, hawk migration, Raven Cliff Falls, and backcountry trails reveal the steep eastern edge of the Blue Ridge within Mountain Bridge Wilderness.
Edisto Beach State Park
A beachfront campground and inland Live Oak section offer shelling, swimming, marsh views, cabins, environmental exhibits, and trails through forest built over ancient shell deposits.
Landsford Canal State Park
Catawba River trails pass nineteenth-century canal structures and one of the world’s largest stands of Rocky Shoals spider lilies, which bloom across rapids in late spring.
Foothills Trail
The trail links Oconee and Table Rock state parks through gorges, rivers, Lake Jocassee overlooks, waterfalls, long stair systems, and remote forest.
Palmetto Trail
Mountain singletrack, rail-trail, forests, swamps, battlefields, rural roads, and urban greenways form a developing route across South Carolina.
Prisma Health Swamp Rabbit Trail
More than twenty miles of paved greenway connect downtown Greenville, Furman University, Travelers Rest, parks, neighborhoods, and former rail alignments.
Brookgreen Gardens
More than nine thousand acres hold American figurative sculpture, formal and native gardens, a Lowcountry zoo, creek excursions, and interpretation of four former rice plantations.
Magnolia Plantation and Gardens
Informal paths, bridges, azaleas, cypress-tupelo swamp, wildlife, a house, and former rice fields create a layered Ashley River landscape.
Cypress Gardens
Flat-bottom boats and walking paths enter a bald-cypress and tupelo swamp, with a butterfly house, bird habitats, gardens, and interpretation of a former rice plantation.
Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden
Pearl Fryar transformed ordinary and salvaged plants into spirals, arches, letters, and abstract forms across his residential yard, building a public garden through decades of patient clipping.
Moore Farms Botanical Garden
Intensive perennial borders, formal and informal rooms, water features, greenhouses, meadows, and agricultural references form a research-minded garden in the Pee Dee.
South Carolina Botanical Garden
Nearly three hundred acres include natural trails, native-plant habitats, display gardens, geology exhibits, historic buildings, and the Bob Campbell Geology Museum.
Riverbanks Zoo & Garden
Animal habitats, conservation exhibits, botanical collections, historic Saluda River ruins, and a pedestrian bridge connect the zoo to a hillside garden.
South Carolina Aquarium
Galleries descend through South Carolina watersheds to the coast, culminating in a two-story ocean tank and a visible sea-turtle hospital.
Greenville Zoo
Giraffes, primates, big cats, reptiles, birds, and conservation programs occupy a walkable campus inside Cleveland Park.
Sweetgrass Basket Pavilion
A public pavilion near the Cooper River provides space for Gullah basketmakers whose coiled sweetgrass tradition joins West African knowledge, Lowcountry materials, family teaching, and contemporary design.
Catawba Cultural Center
Exhibits, pottery, language, archives, trails, and community programs present the Catawba Nation’s history and continuing cultural work beside the Catawba River.
Carolina Wren
A warm-brown wren with a white eyebrow lives close to cover across South Carolina and serves as the state bird.
Carolina Pygmy Sunfish
This tiny olive fish is restricted to vegetated blackwater habitats in South Carolina’s Edisto and nearby coastal drainages.
Carolina Heelsplitter
A dark, heavy-shelled freshwater mussel persists in scattered cool Piedmont streams of the Carolinas, with critical South Carolina populations.
Carolina Wolf Spider
North America’s largest wolf spider patrols open ground after dark and is South Carolina’s official state spider.
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
This large striped butterfly, South Carolina’s state butterfly, moves between tree canopies, flowers, puddles, and host plants.
Carolina Mantid
South Carolina’s state insect is a gray, green, or brown ambush predator of gardens, old fields, and woodland edges.
Oconee Bell
A low evergreen groundcover with fringed white flowers forms colonies in the Jocassee Gorges and a few nearby Blue Ridge watersheds.