Old Santee Canal Park

In the years just after the American Revolution, South Carolina planters faced a problem. Their cotton and rice grew far up the rivers of the interior, but the wealth of the state flowed through the port of Charleston. Moving goods overland was slow and costly, so the state chartered a canal to join the Santee River to the Cooper, giving inland crops a water road all the way to the sea.

Work began in 1793 and the canal opened in 1800, running about twenty-two miles with a series of locks to lift boats over the high ground between the two rivers. It was one of the earliest canals of its kind in the young nation, and the labor that dug it was overwhelmingly that of enslaved African Americans, whose skill and toil made the waterway possible. For a few decades it carried a steady traffic of poled and towed barges before railroads and unreliable water levels drew business away.

The canal fell out of use by the mid-1800s, and much of its route later disappeared beneath the lakes created by the Santee Cooper hydroelectric project in the 1940s. This park preserves the surviving southern terminus, where the old towpath still runs along the water and the story of the canal is told for visitors who come to walk it.

The heart of the park is its boardwalk system, a network of raised wooden paths that lets you walk dry-shod through a landscape that is otherwise standing water. Bald cypress and water tupelo rise straight out of the swamp, their trunks flaring into wide buttressed bases and ringed by knobby cypress knees poking up from the surface. Spanish moss drapes the branches, and the water below reflects the canopy like dark glass.

Along the way you cross Biggin Creek and skirt the old canal, with interpretive signs marking points of interest. Paddlers can put in and follow the creek by canoe or kayak, gliding quietly among the trees where an engine could never go. It is an easy, gentle outing, more a slow immersion in the swamp than a strenuous hike, and it rewards anyone willing to stop and watch the water.

On a bluff above the creek stands the Stony Landing plantation house, a simple frame dwelling from about 1843 that anchors the park's historic grounds. Nearby sits a full-size replica of the Little David, a strange, cigar-shaped, steam-powered vessel built during the Civil War. It rode low in the water and was designed to slip up to enemy warships and strike them with a spar torpedo, an early ancestor of the submarine.

The real Little David was built near this landing and attacked a Union ironclad off Charleston in 1863, one of the first uses of a semi-submersible torpedo boat in naval warfare. The replica on the grounds, together with the county museum housed in the park, gives visitors a window into the layered history of this quiet corner of Berkeley County, from plantation farming to wartime invention.

The swamp teems with life. American alligators cruise the still water, turtles line the logs, and wading birds like great blue herons, egrets, and wood storks hunt the shallows. Barred owls call from the canopy, prothonotary warblers flash gold through the cypress in spring, and river otters and raccoons leave their tracks along the banks. Snakes, both harmless and venomous, are part of the swamp, so it pays to stay on the boardwalks and watch where you step.

Spring and fall are the most comfortable times to walk here, with mild air and active wildlife. Summer is lush and green but hot and buggy, so early mornings are best and repellent is a must. Winter strips the cypress bare and quiets the swamp, opening long views through the trees and making the boardwalk a peaceful cool-season stroll.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.