ACE Basin

The ACE Basin

The ACE Basin is a big place, taking in about 350,000 acres of cypress swamps, saltwater marsh, beach, woodlands and small coastal communities bounded by the Ashepoo, Combahee and Edisto rivers.

It’s the largest such pristine estuary of its kind on the East Coast, home to such threatened or endangered species as wood storks, short nose sturgeon, loggerhead turtles and bald eagles sharing the bounty of the land and sea with human endeavors such as vegetable farming, shrimping and recreational fishing.

A great way to gain an appreciation of this interaction is at the Edisto Interpretive Center at Edisto Beach State Park.

The 7,000-square-foot center, which opened in May 2004, hosts classes, programs and exhibits that focus on helping visitors learn how people and development can live more compatibly with the environment.

The Edisto Beach Interpretive Center

The center is itself a “green building,” designed to practice the “tread more lightly” ethic it teaches inside. It also blends in seamlessly with the marsh and maritime woods surrounding it.

A joint venture of the South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation & Tourism and South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, the Edisto Interpretive Center is at the 1,200-acre park’s Live Oak boat landing.

Other areas of the popular park (long treasured for its marsh-side cabins, oceanfront camping and shell-covered beach) and the rest of the big sea island also help capture the flavor of the ACE Basin.

For instance, it has a long history of human use, going back at least 6,000 years based on evidence of shell middens, pottery shards and arrowheads found throughout the region. At the park, there’s a large midden, called the Spanish Mount, locally known as the Indian Mound, located along a marsh creek and accessible by an easy-to-walk trail through the woods.

Edisto Island itself, meanwhile, has a number of other historic sites and old plantation homes and churches, and once was well known for its sea island cotton.

More than 140,000 acres of the ACE Basin form a National Estuarine Research Reserve, the third largest in the country. For more on the joint state-federal work being done in the reserve, click here.

Edisto Beach State Park is about 50 miles southeast of Charleston. For more information, call the park at 843-869-2756 or click here.