Qualla: Congaree National Park

Congaree National Park: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The trees here are taller than they should be. A bald cypress along Cedar Creek reaches over 167 feet. A loblolly pine pushes 169. A sweetgum stretches 157. By eastern American standards these are giants - the tallest forest canopy east of the Mississippi - and they exist because almost no one ever cut them down. Around 1905, the Santee River Cypress Lumber Company tried. They acquired most of the land and started felling cypress, but the perpetually wet floodplain held the cut logs too green to float, and operations folded within a decade. The trees the loggers had killed lay in the water, slowly returning to soil. The ones still standing kept growing. Seventy years later, a grassroots campaign saved them again.

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Congaree National Park: Smallpox, Maroons, and Cypress

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Congaree people gave their name to the river and the floodplain. Around 1700, a smallpox epidemic introduced by European settlers decimated the tribe. The land passed by royal grant, then by state grant. Attempts to farm the floodplain continued through 1860 but the spring an...

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Congaree National Park: 1976: The Grass Roots

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1969, with timber prices high, private landowners began considering renewed logging of the old growth that had survived the first attempt. A coalition formed in response - the Sierra Club joined local citizens in what became one of the more effective grassroots campaigns in th...

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Congaree National Park: Hurricane Hugo

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On September 22, 1989, Hurricane Hugo made landfall in South Carolina as a Category 4 storm and ripped through the park. Several National Champion trees - individuals certified by American Forests as the largest of their species - came down. The destruction looked, at first, like...

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Congaree National Park: The Boardwalk and Beyond

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Most visitors never leave the boardwalk. The 2.4-mile elevated loop from the Harry Hampton Visitor Center is wheelchair accessible and offers the easiest introduction to a place that can otherwise feel impenetrable. You see pileated woodpeckers, hear barred owls, watch the Spanis...

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Congaree National Park: Stay Safe, Look Up

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Eastern cottonmouths, copperheads, canebrake rattlers, and the rare eastern coralsnake all live here. So do white-tailed deer ticks, dog ticks, mosquitos at industrial scale, and feral hogs whose mothers are not in any mood to discuss things. The trees, however, are what people c...

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