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Givhans Ferry State Park is the perfect place to take a float down the serene Edisto River, the longest free-flowing blackwater stream in North America.
On the dry side, Givhans Ferry boasts a well-regarded mountain bike trail, shady campgrounds and well-kept, rustic cabins that offer a peaceful stay in the rural Lowcountry woods and an easy drive to historic Charleston.
Built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the Great Depression, the park is part of the 56-mile long Edisto River Canoe and Kayak Trail, and is at the end of a popular 21-mile downstream paddle from Colleton State Park.
A natural retreat, Givhans Ferry State Park is also known for its limestone river bluff and sinkholes, some six to eight feet deep.
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 Ridgeville |
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Military & Law Enforcement Golf Discount
What would you call a state park that offers 18 holes of lakeside championship golf, tennis, skeet shooting and archery, a swimming pool for lodge guests, full-service restaurant and meeting facilities and more than 70 lodge rooms?
That would be Hickory Knob State Resort Park.
The only full-service resort in the S.C. State Park Service, Hickory Knob rests on rolling, wooded shoreline alongside 70,000-acre Strom Thurmond Reservoir on the Savannah River: South Carolina’s “West Coast.”
The park’s amenities also include a boat ramp, campgrounds and one of the state’s most popular mountain biking trails. Serene and tucked away, location is another plus for this destination, with picturesque, historic small towns such as Abbeville and Greenwood nearby and Augusta and Anderson (and Clemson) just an easy drive away.
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 McCormick |
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NOTICE TO CABIN GUESTS
Hunting Island is South Carolina’s single most popular state park, attracting more than a million human visitors a year.
Also attracted to the semi-tropical barrier island is an array of wildlife, ranging from loggerhead sea turtles to painted buntings, barracudas to sea horses, alligators, pelicans, dolphins and deer, raccoons, Eastern diamondback rattlesnakes and even the rare coral snake.
What they all enjoy is five miles of beach, thousands of acres of marsh, tidal creeks and maritime forest, a saltwater lagoon and ocean inlet. Amenities include a fishing pier and some of the state’s most desirable campsites.
Adding to the natural history of the big park is a piece of man-made history: South Carolina’s only publicly accessible historic lighthouse. Dating from the 1870s, the Hunting Island Lighthouse shoots 170 feet into the air, giving those who scale its heights a breathtaking view of the sweeping Lowcountry marshland and the Atlantic Ocean.
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 Hunting Island |
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With its stunning view of the Blue Ridge and woods full of rhododendrons, mountain laurel and wildflowers, Keowee-Toxaway State Natural Area is truly one of South Carolina’s pretty places.
The Jocassee Gorges Visitor Center exhibits and other visitor information serve as a gatewayto the Jocassee Gorges, roughly 50,000 acres of largely undisturbed, protected land where the Blue Ridge Mountains quickly fall 2,000 feet or more to the Piedmont below.
The park features a rental cabin with a porch overlooking Lake Keowee and a courtesy dock. Camping also is available.
For day use, there’s picnicking, shoreline fishing and hiking trails.
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 Sunset |
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A wide, open beach, fishing pier full of anglers and stories, campgrounds in the oceanfront woods, all in the middle of it all in Myrtle Beach.
Since 1935, a trip to the beach has meant a stay at Myrtle Beach State Park each year for hundreds of thousands of families from across the United States and Canada.
Located in the heart of the bustling Grand Strand, one of America’s most popular and diverse vacation destinations, Myrtle Beach State Park also is a natural retreat, home to one of South Carolina’s last stands of easily accessible, oceanfront maritime forest.
Programming and a nature center offer visitors the chance to learn more about dolphins, sea turtles and the abundant bird and plant life that grace the leafy park.
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 Myrtle Beach |
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Oconee State Park offers the joys of a mountain retreat without the work.
The historic park rests deep in the Blue Ridge foothills, with several picturesque but non-demanding hiking trails and well-kept cabins and campgrounds that have welcomed families for annual trips since the days the park was first built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression.
The park’s fishing lakes offer bass and bream and the woods are full of wildlife, fur and feather alike.
Oconee State Park also serves as the southern trailhead for the Foothills Trail, an 80-mile wilderness hike on the dramatic Blue Ridge Escarpment on up to Table Rock. Adjacent to Sumter National Forest, the park also serves as a jumping off point to the nearby Chattooga and Chauga rivers, hotspots for whitewater rafting and trout fishing.
For those wanting to take it easy, Oconee State Park is an ideal destination. After all, its mailing address is the town of Mountain Rest.
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 Mountain Rest |
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A unique combination of history and mixed ecosystems makes Poinsett State Park a special place in the woods.
The rural Sumter County park’s setting in the High Hills of Santee where the Midlands sandhills meets the coastal plains has given rise to such unusual sights as mountain laurel festooned with Spanish moss.
The serene setting also offers camping, a fishing pond with coquina bathhouse built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, and clean, rustic cabins high atop a hill where often the only sound is the breeze through the trees.
The mix of steep hills and bluffs, pine and hardwood forests and Lowcountry swamp also is home to a wide range of plant and animal life.
Hiking is a favorite activity at Poinsett, where its own extensive trail system connects to the Palmetto Trail in adjacent Manchester State Forest.
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 Wedgefield |
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Park Video Tour
Current Weather Conditions on Lake Marion at Santee State Park
Santee State Park offers cabins, camping, biking, hiking, boating and fishing in the heart of one of the nation’s best-known outdoors destinations – Santee Cooper Country.
The park sits along Lake Marion, one of the two lakes (the other’s Moultrie) that gave birth to America’s inland striped bass fishery. Together, the lakes cover more than 170,000 acres and now also are known for their abundant populations of huge catfish.
The park’s rondette cabins, including 10 on piers over the lake, have been hosting outdoorsmen and families for generations. A community meeting building, with its large, screened-in grilling facility, also attracts groups.
Out in the lake across from the park is Lake Marion’s flooded cypress forest. Pontoon boat tours into the lake’s swampy headwaters are based out of the park’s marina/park store.
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 Santee |
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Table Rock Mountain provides a towering backdrop for an upcountry retreat at the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Table Rock State Park features two lakes, a campground, mountain cabins, meeting facilities and its historic, renovated lodge.
The park has been one of South Carolina’s most popular since it was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. Many of its structures are now on the National Register of Historic Places.
Table Rock was home to one of the state’s first formal nature education programs and now serves as a trailhead for the 80-mile long Foothills Trail through the wilderness along the Blue Ridge Escarpment. Trails through the forested park also include one that leads to the top of Table Rock Mountain itself.
The park also hosts a visitors center near the main gate along S.C. 11, the Cherokee Foothills National Scenic Highway.
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Pickens |
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Barnwell State Park may be the best fishing hole in South Carolina that not many folks know about.
A traditional state park primarily serving the people of Barnwell County, Barnwell State Park offers camping and cabins, picnicking and playgrounds, and a community center long favored for meetings and reunions.
There’s also a nature trail that winds around a pair of nice-sized ponds that many locals know hold a good population of bream and bass, some of them surprisingly large.
Barnwell State Park is one of 16 state parks in South Carolina built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression to provide jobs for the men who built them and recreational opportunities for the people who live nearby.
Such as great fishing. Guess the secret’s out!
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 Blackville |
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