Congaree Creek Heritage Preserve

 

 To know me is to know that I love history and that I love the natural world. I am always through the moon when I am able to combine these two things with some good old-fashioned hiking. Recently, I was able to visit the 627-acre Congaree Creek Heritage Preserve and hike the 3-mile Guignard Brickworks Trail. The trail was well marked (I only lost it once), forested, narrow in some places, soggy in others, and ran through a wetland area and along the Congaree Creek. This area is prone to flooding, so I would advise avoiding the trail after a substantial rainfall (although there exists a short cut trail which was made to cut out some of the frequently flooded areas).  It is home to the threatened Atlantic White Cedar, once one of the most valuable timber trees in the Southeast.  Despite being a stone’s throw away from the capital city, I was surprised to find myself quite swept away from modern life and imagining all of the history that occurred on the ground beneath my feet. It left me with a sense of being outside of time, as if, upon closing my eyes and stilling my mind, I could hear the voices of the past mingling with the bird songs in the air.

Closing your eyes, one could imagine the Old Guignard Brickworks quarry from which the trail gets its name. The loud hustle and bustle of a turn of the century clay mine, covered with working men and the clang of rails and carts and equipment stripping the clay from the ground to make the 2 million bricks a year that would find their way into many of the buildings of Columbia, including the old Olympia and Granby Mills and the interior of the South Carolina State House. The land still bears some of the scars from that quarry in the form of long water filled trenches which are now home to all sorts of wildlife, including apparently, alligators. Despite trying to keep a keen eye out for these allusive reptiles, I was never able to spot it.  Sadly, the picture below is not mine, but one that another hiker was able to capture. (All of the remaining pictures are mine.)  There were also remains of what I assume were the train tracks that ran into this area to deliver to move and deliver the clay to the Brickworks in Cayce, although I have been unable to confirm that as of this writing.

If one were to travel even further back in time, you would find yourself in the midst of a Civil War skirmish between Confederate troops and Sherman’s Union troops. Confederate troops were tasked with defending the Old State Rd. bridge from the Federal troops in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent Sherman’s troops from crossing the Congaree River into Columbia near the end of the war. In fact, not very far from this trail, accessible by the nearby Timmerman Trail is one of the most intact Civil War battle sites in the country featuring a half-mile long earthworks berm built in 1865 by enslaved and freed African Americans impressed into service by the Confederate army.

Rolling back the calendar further, you would find yourself in the settlement of Saxe Gotha at Fort Congaree which was established in the early 1700s and was used as an outpost during the Revolutionary War period.  As an interesting aside, did you know that there was a crime wave during the summer of 1766 in this area? Gangs terrorized the Dutch Fork and Saxe Gotha settlements.  Anyone thought to have money or valuables would be tortured until they revealed the whereabouts of the booty.  Apparently, the gangs' favorite method was to put hot coals or pokers to the feet and various other parts of the anatomy!  Yikes!

Even earlier in time, you would have stood by the Old Cherokee Trail which led from the Appalachian Mountains to the coast and would have seen a Native American gathering place alongside the trail.  Archeologist have found tools, pottery shards and arrowheads dating back 12,000 years ago!   Most of the archeological evidence leads the experts to believe that this was not a permanent settlement spot for Native Americans, but more likely a meeting place and winter camp before making their way down the Congaree River to the Atlantic.  This was easiest for me to picture as I sat by the quiet and peaceful banks of the Congaree Creek as I imagine those travelling along the trail would have done.   

I definitely enjoyed the little time I spent exploring this trail and it definitely will go into my regular rotation of local trails.  I hope as time goes by, I will be able to learn more about the history of this little spot of earth.  In the meantime, I hope you will enjoy some of the pictures that I took along the way.   

Sadly, I wasn't able to spot this fella myself

Once an old Cherokee Trail....Who knew?

There were LOTS of pretty majestic trees in this preserve

Congaree Creek which flows into the Congaree River

I met several very sweet doggies on the trail!

More of the beautiful Congaree Creek

Parts of the trail were extremely "root-y" as you can see

some of the ponds were crystal clear!

Train axel hanging about in the woods

What sort of force drove these to rails THROUGH a tree??

A few nice benches to rest along the way

Thank you to trail bridge builders everywhere who keep my feet from getting muddy!

More left-over rails hanging about

Some of the ponds were florescent green with duck weed

As a disclaimer, obviously I am not a historian, but always a student.  My information comes from the kiosk at the trailhead, the SC DNR Website, and Walter Edgar's History of South Carolina.  

I'll leave you finally with a quote from Wendell Berry's essay "A Native Hill"

   "To walk in the woods, mindful only of the physical extent of it, is to go perhaps as owner, or as knower, confident of one's own history and of one's own importance.  But to go there, mindful as well of its temporal extent, of the age of it, and of all that led up to the present life of it, and of all that may follow it, is to feel oneself a flea in the pelt of a great living thing, the discrepancy between its life and ones' own so great that it cannot be imagined."

Suzannah (A Wandering Pilgrim)