This day trip from Charleston is a loop of roughly 130 miles and about three and a half hours of driving, with six stops, that leaves downtown around 8:30 a.m. and has you back on the peninsula by 6 p.m. It goes out Ashley River Road to the ruins at Colonial Dorchester, through Summerville, west to the cypress boardwalk at Beidler Forest, on to St. George for lunch and the town clock, south to the Edisto River at Givhans Ferry, and home on I-26. Total admission for one adult is $21. Do it Wednesday through Saturday; Beidler Forest is closed Monday and Tuesday and opens late on Sunday.
The mileages and times below are approximate, taken from map estimates rather than a logged odometer, and they assume dry roads and no train on the tracks in St. George. Add a quarter hour for the whole loop if it is Grits Festival weekend in April.
Why Dorchester County?
Charleston calls itself the most haunted city in America. Almost nobody drives forty miles upriver to see where the people and the money came from. This loop covers that ground in a day: a 1690s river town the British burned, a health-resort summer colony, a swamp that was never logged, a railroad town, and a blackwater river.
Stop 1: Ashley River Road (SC 61)
Leave downtown Charleston at 8:30. Take SC 61, Ashley River Road, northwest out of West Ashley. Past the four-lane stretch near Sam Rittenberg Boulevard the road narrows to two lanes under big oaks, and a ten-mile section north of the Church Creek bridge is a National Scenic Byway. The road itself was listed on the National Register in 1983. You pass the gates of Drayton Hall, Magnolia Plantation, and Middleton Place in that order. Drayton Hall, a Palladian house built 1747–52, is the only plantation house on the Ashley that came through both the Revolution and the Civil War intact. Each of these is a half-day on its own. Today you are driving past them. Pick one and come back.
Stop 2: Colonial Dorchester State Historic Site
About 22 miles, 40 minutes from downtown. Arrive 9:15. 300 State Park Road, Summerville. Open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. during daylight saving time, 9 to 5 the rest of the year. $3 adults, $1.50 SC seniors, $1 ages 6–15, under 5 free.
From SC 61, turn right onto SC 165 at Cooks Crossroads, then follow signs to the park on the Ashley. This is the site of Dorchester, settled in January 1696 by a Congregationalist minister named Joseph Lord and his flock from Dorchester, Massachusetts. Some sources say 1697; the state park service uses that year, the historians who cite Lord’s first sermon on January 26, 1696, use the earlier one. The town prospered as a river trading post until the Revolution, when both armies used it and the British burned St. George’s Anglican Church in December 1781 on their way out. Nobody moved back.
What stands: the brick bell tower of St. George’s, added to the church in 1751; the walls of a fort built 1757–60 from tabby, a concrete of lime, sand, and oyster shell, which the park calls the best-preserved tabby fortification in the country; the churchyard; and at low tide the remains of a log wharf in the river. An interpretive trail and kiosks explain the rest. Allow 45 minutes. The tower is the subject of one of the dispatches, The Tower with No Bell.
Stop 3: Summerville
About 6 miles, 12 minutes. Arrive 10:15. Follow Dorchester Road and Main Street north into town. Park near Azalea Park on South Main or around the square.
Summerville is where the Dorchester people went after 1781, up onto a dry sand ridge under the pines. In 1899 an international congress of physicians named it one of the two best places in the world to recover from lung and throat disease, and the town sold itself as a health resort. The Chamber of Commerce adopted “Flower Town in the Pines” in 1925. Azalea Park’s core is 16 acres given to the town in 1920, planted with azaleas donated by a nurseryman named George Segelken in 1929. Walk the park and the few blocks of Hutchinson Square. Thirty minutes is enough. If it is the last weekend of March or the first of April you have landed in the Flowertown Festival, 200,000 people in a town of 51,000, and you should either stay all day or get out. I have a separate page on that.
Coffee and a pastry here will hold you until St. George.
Stop 4: Francis Beidler Forest
About 22 miles, 35 minutes. Arrive 11:30. 336 Sanctuary Road, Harleyville. Open Wednesday through Saturday 9 to 5, Sunday 11 to 4, closed Monday and Tuesday. $12 adults, $7 ages 6–12, under 5 free, free on second Saturdays, $1 off if you buy online a day ahead. Phone 843-487-9988.
Take US 78 west out of Summerville, then US 178 toward Harleyville, then follow the Audubon signs down Sanctuary Road. The Audubon Center sits on the edge of Four Holes Swamp, a tract the lumberman Francis Beidler bought in the 1890s and his family left standing until the Nature Conservancy and Audubon bought it in the 1960s. The boardwalk is a 1.75-mile loop through old-growth bald cypress and tupelo, a forest Audubon says has not changed in more than a thousand years. Barred owls in daylight, prothonotary warblers in spring, otters if you are lucky, snakes on the rails if you are not watching. Allow an hour and a quarter for the loop at a walking pace. Audubon asks you to start by 3 p.m.; you will be well ahead of that.
Stop 5: St. George
About 15 miles, 20 minutes. Arrive 1:00. Take US 178 to US 15 South into town. Park on Parler Avenue near the tracks.
St. George is the county seat, about 1,800 people, built on both sides of one of the first railroads in the country. Lunch first. Bistro 221 at 221 North Parler Avenue is open Wednesday through Saturday for lunch and dinner and Sunday until 4. Nannie’s Kitchen at 307 North Parler does sandwiches until 6 on weekdays and 3 on Saturday, closed Sunday. Then walk it: the three-faced town clock at 129 North Parler, in place since 1955, which plays the Westminster chimes on the hour; the Klauber Building at 225 North Parler, an 1894 store that now holds the visitor center and town museum, open weekdays 9 to 4, free; and the 1920s Lourie Theater at 206 North Parler, restored for live shows. The courthouse on Ridge Street holds the county archives. If it is the first week of October, the Indian Field camp meeting is a few miles north on US 15, and if it is the second weekend of April, downtown is the World Grits Festival. Allow an hour and a quarter including lunch. More on the things to do in St. George page.
Stop 6: Givhans Ferry State Park
About 20 miles, 30 minutes. Arrive 3:00. 746 Givhans Ferry Road, Ridgeville. Open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., until 9 during daylight saving time. $6 adults, $3.75 SC seniors, $3.50 ages 6–15, under 5 free.
Take US 78 east from St. George toward Ridgeville, then SC 27 south to the river. The park sits on a limestone bluff over the Edisto, which the state calls the longest free-flowing blackwater river in North America. Phillip Givhan ran the ferry here in the late 1700s on the Charleston-to-Augusta road. The City of Charleston gave the land in 1934, the Civilian Conservation Corps built the river house and cabins, and the park opened in 1937. Walk down to the water. The bluff is a Heritage Trust site and there are sinkholes six to eight feet deep in the woods. From May to September an outfitter runs tubing out of the park; the rest of the year the river is quiet and the color of strong tea. Allow an hour. The river gets a dispatch of its own, The Edisto Keeps Its Own.
Home on I-26
About 45 miles, 50 minutes. Back downtown by 5:30 or 6. From the park, take SC 27 north through Ridgeville to I-26 and head east. The interstate drops you on the peninsula at US 17 or the Meeting Street exits. If you want supper on the way, Summerville is the last town with a real choice of restaurants before North Charleston.
Quick reference
| Stop | Address | Hours | Adult fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colonial Dorchester | 300 State Park Rd, Summerville | 9–6 (DST), 9–5 (winter) | $3 |
| Summerville / Azalea Park | S. Main St, Summerville | always | free |
| Beidler Forest | 336 Sanctuary Rd, Harleyville | Wed–Sat 9–5, Sun 11–4 | $12 |
| St. George / Klauber Building | 225 N. Parler Ave, St. George | Mon–Fri 9–4 | free |
| Givhans Ferry | 746 Givhans Ferry Rd, Ridgeville | 9–6, to 9 in DST | $6 |
Everything on this route is on the county map, and the county history page tells the story in order, from Joseph Lord’s sermon to the clock on Parler Avenue. The dispatches pick up where the history leaves off.
Sources
- South Carolina Highway 61, Wikipedia
- Ashley River Road, Wikipedia
- Drayton Hall, Wikipedia
- Colonial Dorchester State Historic Site, SC State Parks
- Colonial Dorchester State Historic Site, Wikipedia
- In the Path of War marker, HMdb
- Summerville, South Carolina, Wikipedia
- Flowertown Festival, Visit Summerville
- Audubon Center at Francis Beidler Forest, Visit
- Town of St. George, Places of Interest
- Klauber Building, SC Picture Project
- St. George Town Clock, SC Picture Project
- Lourie Theater, Cinema Treasures
- St. George, South Carolina, Wikipedia
- Givhans Ferry State Park, FAQs
- Givhans Ferry State Park, History and Interpretation