S.C. Encyclopedia | South Carolina’s 180-mile coastline is replete with bays, inlets, and harbors. To assist shipping and aid navigation, lighthouses and beacons have dotted the South Carolina coast for centuries. The earliest warning lights were probably bonfires lit to aid ships entering the harbor at Charleston. South Carolina’s first lighthouse, built in 1767, stood on Middle Bay Island (now a part of Morris Island) in the Charleston harbor.
Staff reports | A one-day pop-up photography exhibit on Aug. 20 at McLeod Plantation Historic Site will feature photos from award-winning photographer Pete Marovich from his exhibit entitled Shadows of the Gullah Geechee.
Marovich’s photographs explore the lives and culture of the Gullah Geechee people in communities from Hog Hammock on Sapelo Island, Ga., to Mosquito Beach on Sol Legare Island in Charleston County.
S.C. Encyclopedia | Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) is a gray tree-borne epiphyte native to the coastal plain of the southeastern United States. As an epiphyte, Spanish moss gets water and food from the air and does not harm the host tree. It is not a true moss but a relative of the pineapple family in the genus Bromeliaceae.
I believe I am one of the fortunate ones to have received the very first issue of Charleston Currents. While I always learn something new, never has an article resonated as much as the one on the Civilian Conservation Corps.
S.C. Encyclopedia | The South Carolina phosphate mining industry began after the Civil War and dominated world production in the 1880s. Mining began in late 1867 on plantations near Charleston after the gentlemen-scientists Francis S. Holmes and St. Julien Ravenel and the chemists N. A. Pratt and C. U. Shepard discovered that local “stinking stones” contained unusually high amounts of bone phosphate of lime (BPL).
Battles of Ninety Six: Situated in the South Carolina backcountry at the crossroads of important trade routes, Ninety Six was a newly established courthouse town on the eve of the Revolutionary War. The question of independence deeply divided the inhabitants of the district.
Historic Charleston Foundation (HCF) sprang from the activities of the Carolina Art Association. In 1941 the association began a survey of historic buildings in Charleston, published in 1944 as This Is Charleston.
Patriot and merchant Christopher Gadsden was born in Charleston on February 16, 1724, the son of Elizabeth and Thomas Gadsden, a collector of customs.
A mule is a hybrid animal that results from breeding a male donkey with a female horse. Although mules have gender (males are called “horse mules” and females “mare mules”), they are sterile and cannot reproduce.
While serving as an infantry captain during World War I, the Sumter attorney Wendell M. Levi set up the Pigeon Section of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, having had experience raising homing pigeons as a hobby. Harold Moïse, an air force pilot and a graduate civil engineer with building expertise, shared Levi’s interest in pigeons. In 1923, the two men founded the Palmetto Pigeon Plant on 13 acres of farmland in Sumter County and recruited state senator Davis Moïse to be vice president of the firm.
We Can Do Better, South Carolina! (2019) by editor and publisher Andy Brack offers incisive commentaries on the American South, politics, the common good and interesting South Carolina leaders. Available exclusively for Kindle for $7.99. A paperback version will be ready soon. Learn more.
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