Old Santee Canal Park

Moncks Corner, on the other hand, is a little out of the way and the attractions of the Old Santee Canal Park are much less well known – and undeservedly so. Whether you’re a nature lover, an outdoor adventurer, a sportsman or a history buff, this park will captivate you, and there are more than enough other attractions nearby to fill a full day of recreation.

The Old Santee Canal, built between 1793 and 1800, was America’s first "true canal" connecting the Santee River system to the Cooper River system. Before the canal opened, farmers in South Carolina’s uplands had to ship their crops overland by wagon or float them down the Santee River into the Atlantic Ocean and down the coast to their markets in Charleston. Neither mode of transportation was very cost-efficient or safe, so the business and political leaders of the Lowcountry decided there should be a better route.

***image3***The idea was proposed in the Commons House of Assembly in 1770 and Henry Mouzon, Jr. was commissioned to survey possible routes. The Revolutionary War, however, put the project on hold until 1785, when the new South Carolina General Assembly granted a charter to the Santee Canal Company. General William Moultrie, a shareholder in the company, informed George Washington of the plan and he actually became an investor.

The canal was built to handle a 35-foot difference in elevation between the Santee and the Cooper rivers. It took more than 700 laborers more than seven years to complete the canal, which involved a 34-foot rise through three locks and a 69-foot fall through seven more locks. When completed the canal was 22 miles long, 30 feet wide and 5 ½ feet deep and cost $650,667. (With huge cost overruns, the canal was a disaster for the investors.)

At first, mules and horses pulled barges through the canal, using towpaths on either side. Later, crewmen aboard the barges pushed them through the canal using long poles. The canal worked well except in 1817 and 1819 when years of drought dried it up. Eventually, however, the completion of railroad lines to Charleston took away the canal’s business and it ceased operation in 1850. Much of the old canal was obliterated in 1942 by The Santee-Cooper Project, which backed up waters to create Lake Moultrie and Lake Marion. Only about a mile of the original canal remains.

Visitors can canoe the canal in about two hours; the 3-mile round trip is rated easy, with little if any current, and canoes rent for $3 per half-hour. The canoe trail includes the remaining portion of the canal and Biggin Creek. Long boardwalks and a choice of trails offer splendid views to those who prefer to walk. The park is a haven for red-shouldered hawks, bald eagles, great blue heron, great egret, barred owl, song birds and anhinga, a rare bird, mostly black, with a long, slender neck and long tail, that swims with only its head and neck above water. There are also yellow-bellied slider turtles, alligators, lizards, snakes, wood ducks, deer, wild turkey, frogs, squirrels and many kinds of fish. Cypress trees abound in and around the creek and canal, along with live oak, pine and other species, often festooned with Spanish moss.

***image1***The Santee Canal Park Interpretive Center is a modern building nicely designed to fit unobtrusively into the landscape but affording wonderful views from a huge window wall on the creek side. The interpretive center holds exhibits on the archaeology of the area including prehistoric and historic artifacts found on the site, including colona ware fragments and pole tips used by canal boatmen. There is also a large model of the canal being built and in operation, and a cutaway replica of the Little David semisubmersible torpedo boat built on the site in 1863.

A full-scale replica of the Little David torpedo boat stands outside the Berkeley Museum, another part of the Old Santee Canal Park. The Little David delivered the first successful torpedo-boat attack in naval warfare history on October 5, 1863 off the Charleston coast. The craft was 54 feet long and five feet wide, streamlined and cylindrical like a torpedo of today, and large enough for only four men inside. It was steam-powered by a discarded locomotive engine and had a top speed of 10 knots. It carried a torpedo on the end of a long pole at its bow.

After successfully navigating into Charleston Harbor at night, the boat maneuvered toward the USS New Ironsides, which was considered to be the most formidable warship in the world at the time. The Little David had moved to within close range before it was spotted by the Union ship. Skipper W.T. Glassell fired his guns toward the men on deck as he plowed the Little David full speed into the Ironsides. The impact when it hit sent a large spout of water into the air, which then came down upon the David, putting out the fire in the boiler. Three of the seamen abandoned ship and two were captured. The third made his way back to the boat and reboarded. He and the other man on board (who couldn’t swim) managed to restart the boiler and get the boat back to shore. The Confederates didn’t succeed in sinking the New Ironsides that night but damaged it so extensively that it had to be taken to Philadelphia for repairs.

The Berkeley Museum houses exhibits on subjects ranging from the area’s first Indian inhabitants to the "Swamp Fox," Brigadier General Francis Marion, to the planters who settled in the area. One item of particular interest is a 1926 map by J. Palmer Gaillard showing the plantations of Berkeley County and parts of Charleston and Dorchester County before the area was inundated by the Santee-Cooper Project.

Other attractions in the area of the Old Santee Canal Park include Mepkin Trappist Monastery, the Beggins Church Ruins and Cemetery, the Strawberry Chapel, Strawberry Landing and the Rice Hope Plantation.