Reflections of South Carolina

Tom Poland

Description

A pictorial display of South Carolina's extravagant beauty

Truly a book that will captivate newcomers and renew the appreciation of longtime residents, this breathtaking photographic exploration showcases the fullness of the state's regional diversity, natural beauty, and human creativity. Two hundred color photographs record South Carolina's people and places, architecture and terrain, flora and fauna, past and progress. With a remarkable ability to capture the splendor and spirit of the land and its inhabitants, Robert C. Clark's photographs and Tom Poland's text craft a work of artistry and magnificence. A foreword by South Carolina historian Walter Edgar complements the photographs.

From the forests and white-water rivers of the mountains to the cypress swamps of the coastal plain, South Carolina's natural wonders shine forth. The state's diverse geography and wealth of rivers, lakes, streams, and marshes are depicted along with such sights as an early Upstate snowfall, vibrantly colored wildflowers, a live oak tunnel near Edisto Island, and cypress needles on a Carolina bay.

South Carolina artisans and performers are featured, as are cityscapes, the technological achievements of the state's industries, and its numerous recreational opportunities. The volume includes historic landmarks such as the State House, Midleton Place, Wilcox Inn, and the slave tenement at the Aiken-Rhett House, and less prominent structures—gristmills, farmhouses, general stores, and the state's last covered bridge. The photographs show people enjoying music and cultural events; re-creating the Revolutionary and Civil War; casting, crabbing, and shrimping along the coast; and hot air ballooning.

Sujets

• Loisirs
• Collections photographiques
• Landscapes
• Themes
• Subjects
• Fort Mill
• Universidad Clemson
• Planta de energía nuclear de Savannah River
• Charleston Harbor
• Penn Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Savannah National Wildlife Refuge
• South Carolina State House
• Cooper River
• Pinnacle Mountain State Park
• Table Rock
• Travel writing
• Lake Murray
• Ashley River
• New South
• South Carolina State Museum
• Saint Helena Island
• Savannah River
• Clemson University
• Fort Mill, South Carolina
• Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
• Photography
• Capitole de l?État de Caroline du Sud
• Savannah River Site
• Université de Clemson
• Myrtle Beach

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 25 mars 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781611174489
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 70 Mo

Extrait

Reflections of S OUTH C AROLINA

Thomas Fuller built this town house in Beaufort circa 1786. Many buildings escaped destruction during the Civil War, when federal troops occupied the city early in the war. In recent years Beaufort has been the film location of popular movies such as The Big Chill, Forrest Gump, and Prince of Tides.
Reflections of S OUTH C AROLINA
PHOTOGRAPHS BY Robert C. Clark
TEXT BY Tom Poland
FOREWORD BY Walter Edgar

THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA PRESS
To my wife, Ruth, whose love, encouragement, and understanding helped me maintain my direction on this project. To my parents, Jack and Phyllis Clark, and to my sister, Theresa. Finally, to my friend Jay Browne.
R.C.C.
To Connor, Ben, Chelsey, Benton, Becky, and Beth. To the children and their future.
T. P.
1999 University of South Carolina
Cloth edition published by the University of South Carolina Press, 1999 Ebook edition published in Columbia, South Carolina, by the University of South Carolina Press, 2015
www.sc.edu/uscpress
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition as follows:
Clark, Robert C., 1954-
Reflections of South Carolina / photographs by Robert C. Clark ; text by Tom Poland ; foreword by Walter Edgar.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-57003-344-7 (alk. paper)
1. South Carolina Pictorial works. I. Poland, Thomas M., 1949- II. Title.
F255.C58 1999
75.7-dc21
99-6608
ISBN-13: 978-1-57003-344-5
ISBN 978-1-61117-448-9 (ebook)
Cover photograph: A marsh in Beaufort County
C ONTENTS
South Carolina: The Presence of the Past
Reflections of South Carolina
Acknowledgments
Index
S OUTH C AROLINA
The Presence of the Past
FOR FIVE CENTURIES the myriad landscapes and peoples of South Carolina have captured the eye of visitors. In Reflections of South Carolina the magnificent photographs by Robert C. Clark and the accompanying text by Tom Poland provide a penetrating portrait of the Palmetto State. From the sea islands along the Atlantic coast to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Clark and Poland have captured the essence of one of this country s most fascinating places-South Carolina, a land where history and nature have left their marks.
Within South Carolina s relatively small area (31,113 square miles) are the diverse natural landscapes of five geographical regions. Beginning at the Atlantic shore, as visitors almost always have done, one first encounters the coastal zone. Although it extends only about ten miles inland, the coastal zone is among the best-known regions in the country. Within it lies the fabled South Carolina Lowcountry-a haunting, semitropical world of palmettos, moss-draped oaks, tidal rivers, and sea islands. The Lowcountry was South Carolina s first window on the world and remains so today. Rice and indigo produced by the labor of thousands of enslaved Africans made fortunes for planters who built their homes along slow-moving tidal rivers and their town houses in Charleston. By the eve of the American Revolution, South Carolina was Great Britain s wealthiest North American colony. Magnificent public buildings such as Sheldon Church and handsome private dwellings such as Drayton Hall and Hopsewee are visible reminders of the colony s golden age of commerce.
Behind the coastal zone is the coastal plain, the largest region of the state (nearly two-thirds of the land area). From near sea level the land gently rises to an elevation of 220 feet in a series of terraces created by the ancient ebb and flow of the Atlantic Ocean. About sixty miles inland the terrain becomes more rolling and the hills more pronounced. A dozen or so rivers rise in the coastal plain and wend their way haphazardly to the Atlantic. The sandhills straddle the middle of the state. Millennia ago, the ocean reached inland nearly to the location of the present-day state capital of Columbia.
Early settlers were subsistence farmers, but by the 1770s they produced wheat and indigo for export. Cotton was introduced in the 1790s and spread rapidly across the state. For a century cotton was king. In the 1890s tobacco farming migrated south from North Carolina and took hold in the Pee Dee region. In other parts of the region a September drive down a country road would reveal a world as white as if it had been blanketed by a winter snowstorm. In the 1960s the state s agricultural landscape changed again as corn, soybeans, cattle, poultry, and pine trees succeeded cotton. White gold, as cotton was once called, has been making something of a comeback in the 1990s and can be seen in scattered fields of the coastal plain.
Above the sandhills stretch the red clay hills of the Piedmont. In its own way the Piedmont strikes nearly as romantic an image as the Lowcountry. Instead of sinister swamps and blackwater rivers are rolling hills and fertile valleys. Numerous streams and rivers, rising in the hills and distant Blue Ridge Mountains, rush headlong toward the coast. Settled primarily by sturdy yeoman farmers, the Piedmont, too, became a land of cotton. Producing cotton for a world market was the Piedmont farmers ascension from farmer to planter. By the 1890s land butchery and low cotton prices drove thousands to abandon their farms and take industry jobs in textile mills along the rivers of the Piedmont. South Carolina s textile boom of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries created an industrial infrastructure that became the base for modern diversified development of the post-World War II years.
For half of this millennium South Carolina has been part of the international scene. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it witnessed the struggle for empire among England, France, and Spain. In the eighteenth century its exports not only enriched South Carolinians, but the wealth generated in the colony made it a jewel in the crown of the British Empire. Before the American Civil War, cotton and the state s political leaders made South Carolina a force to be reckoned with. After that conflict the state dropped from the world stage for a number of years. Since the 1960s, thanks to international investments and world markets for its native products, the state is once more an integral part of world trade and culture.
For more than four centuries South Carolina has been something of a mini melting pot. Attracted by the semitropical climate, the potential for economic advancement, and the promise of international trade, individuals from many lands have chosen to make this place their home. This triangle of land has witnessed half a millennium s colliding of cultures-European, West African, and Native American-that has produced the South Carolina of today. The first humans moved into South Carolina sometime around 13,500 B.C. Glaciers still covered portions of the North American continent, and mammoths and bison roamed today s coastal plain. Successive waves of peoples we now call Indians entered South Carolina for centuries-the last one occurring about 1150 A.D. By the sixteenth century there may have been as many as forty Indian nations in what is now South Carolina.
A number of these smaller nations disappeared prior to the arrival of Europeans and are remembered only by their names. Rivers and streams bear the names of those who once lived along their banks: Edisto, Ashepoo, Waccamaw, Pee Dee, Santee, Congaree, and Wateree. Today the Catawba, most of whom live near their ancestral lands in York County, are the only federally recognized Indian nation in the state.
By the sixteenth century South Carolina appeared on world maps. England, France, and Spain contested for empire along its South Atlantic coast. In 1526 the Spanish from the West Indies unsuccessfully attempted to establish a colony on the coast. Two French attempts near Port Royal also failed. A Spanish settlement took hold on Parris Island in 1565 but was abandoned in 1587 because of the danger posed by English adventurers. The only imprint the French left was the name Port Royal Sound. The Spanish legacy was more enduring: the name Saint Helena Island, peaches, and the deadly microbes that wiped out nearly one-half of the Native Americans.
English monarchs had claimed all of North America since 1497, but English exploration and settlement did not reach the lands of Carolina until the seventeenth century. In the 1660s Charles II granted charters for the colony to eight of his nobles. These men, styled the Lords Proprietors of Carolina, were entrepreneurs. They immediately set about encouraging immigration to their vast domain. In 1670 settlers-many from Barbados and other British West Indian colonies-established a permanent English settlement at Charleston. South Carolina, like Jamaica, was the cultural offspring-a colony of the colony-of Barbados.
England and the West Indian sugar islands were the cultural mother country of Carolina. The most enduring Caribbean legacy was African slavery, which existed in South Carolina from its founding. The labor of large numbers of African slaves eventually made South Carolina the wealthiest colony in British North America. By 1708 enslaved Africans were a majority of the colony s population, and by 1720 there were about two black South Carolinians for every white, a ratio that remained true until the 1770s.
Forty percent of all enslaved Africans brought to British North America entered through the port of Charleston. Among them were members of some twenty-five distinct West African ethnic groups or nationalities who spoke forty different languages. Gullah, a creole language, emerged as the mother tongue of the African diaspora in Carolina. Their numerical superiority and relative isolation on rural plantations helped black Carolinians preserve elements of their West African heritage through the Gullah language, art and craft skills, and cultural practices.
Successive colonial South Carolina governments did their best to entice European immigran