Old Growth Wetlands and the Start of the Civil War

Today I will start at Congaree National Park, then head down to the Francis Beidler Forest, both old growth botomland forests; finishing up in downtown Charleston, SC.

Charleston, we will all recall is where the Civil War began. Confederate artillery fired on the Federal Government's Fort Sumter, forcing it to surrender. The South held the fort throughout the civil war.

Congaree NP: The 11,000 acres of Congaree National Park claim to hold the "largest contiguous area of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest remaining in the United States." That's a lot of qualifiers. Regardless it is a seriously cool example of riparian wetlands, of what a flood plain would look like if people had not lumbered it, drained it, and built or farmed on it. People like you and I were responsible for saving this forest. It was only after the area was threatened by lumbering that people convinced congress to establish a national monument in 1973. It became a national park in 2003. (http://www.nps.gov/cong/index.htm)

Francis Beidler Forest: The forest is a 12,000 acres preserve owned and cared for by the Audubon Society. The forest is part of the Four Holes Swamp complex which covers almost 45,000 acres of prime bottomland. (http://sc.audubon.org/Centers_FBF.html)