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Multiple trails are available that wind through the Park's uplands. Evidence of fire, once long suppressed, can again be seen on the landscape. Photo courtesy of NPS.
Longleaf Destinations By Karen Zilliox Brown, The Longleaf Alliance
CONGAREE NATIONAL PARK: A LAND OF FIRE AND FLOOD
Just 20 miles from the capital city of Columbia lies one of the wildest landscapes in all of South Carolina. Congaree National Park is the state’s only national park and encompasses one of just a handful of designated wilderness areas in the southeast. Here, wilderness has never been more accessible, finding thousands of acres of quiet to trek, paddle, float, birdwatch, photograph, and imagine these timeless landscapes. A refuge This rugged landscape has a long history of use by many human communities. For thousands of years, indigenous peoples hunted and fished the land. The rich floodplain was later a haven for escaped and freed people. Known as “maroon [ 46 ]
communities,” the formerly enslaved would often seek out wilderness areas, like the land now a part of the Congaree National Park, where detection was less likely, and new dwellings could be established. Some accounts indicate its inhabitants preferred to stay close to the familiar landscape of their former lives and remain near enslaved family members rather than making the risky journey north. The Bottomlands The Park boasts the largest expanse of bottomland hardwood forest in the southeast. Much of the Park’s 26,700 acres are part of the floodplains of the Congaree and Wateree rivers, whose waters regularly flood and recede, recharging and renourishing this old-growth and second-growth ecosystem.
