Synchronistic Fireflies and Champion Trees are two reasons to visit Congaree National Park. Plus, Congaree is among the least visited parks, making it blissfully uncrowded.
I’ve been to 25+ national parks and there are essentially two types: those people go to and those they don’t. Some parks are filled with amenities, trails and things to do and see, and other parks quietly exist to protect rare and spectacular environments. Congaree is one of the latter. It protects the largest intact expanse of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest in the southeastern United States.
Getting to Congaree National Park
The drive to the park from Charleston was interstate primarily and then a two-lane highway. The highway is peppered with ramshackle, small houses, unlike prosperous areas of South Carolina. A few stores and restaurants at intersections make up the businesses. These are small and many are closed, so come prepared with your own supplies.
At about 26,000 acres, it’s a small park by national park standards. There were about 50 cars in the parking lot when I arrived and the rangers said it was a pretty busy day.
With 145,929 visitors in 2018, it ranks as the United States’ 10th-least visited national park. Before it was a national park, it was known as Congaree Swamp National Preserve Association, but if you think it has low visitation now, try having the word “swamp” in the title. Still, it’s accurate, if debatable. They say it’s not technically a swamp, but rather, “it is largely bottomland subject to periodic inundation by floodwaters.” You say potato, I say potatoe.
History of Congaree National Park
The park is a UNESCO biosphere reserve, a federally designated Wilderness Area, a Globally Important Bird Area, an International Biosphere Reserve, and a RAMSAR Wetland of International Importance. How’s that for being important land?
The Congaree Biosphere Region is a highly unique combination of natural resources and cultural heritage, including globally significant, old-growth bottomland hardwood forests. But the land has significant historical importance too.
In the visitor center, you’ll learn the extensive history of Native American people and African American culture, including its role in helping some escape slavery and the people who settled there during the reconstruction period. The land was logged in the colonial period and was a refuge for soldiers during the Revolutionary War. More recently, it’s known for its outdoor recreation and agricultural heritage and as a linking point to railroads, steamships, and more.
1. Congaree National Park Champion Trees
The Old Growth Forest Network has designated the park among the world’s largest concentrations of champion trees. But, What’s a champion tree?
Champion trees are known for their size or significance. Congaree has 15 of the tallest Champion trees, including:
- 167-foot loblolly pine
- 157-foot sweetgum
- 154-foot, cherry bark oak
- 135-foot American elm
- 133-foot swamp chestnut oak
- 131-foot overcup oak
- 127-foot common persimmon
I’ve never even heard of some of those trees before! The size of the trees is also measured by points. Points are where leaves are or were attached so it could be a big canopy and not its height that makes it significant.
2. Synchronistic Fireflies in Congaree National Park
The park gets busy only once during the year—firefly season for about two weeks between mid-May and mid-June. There are over 2,000 firefly species worldwide, but only three species of synchronous flashing fireflies exist in North America. Congaree is one of the places to see them. Synchronous fireflies flash as a simultaneous rhythmic group flashing versus normal fireflies, which flash of their own accord.
During “firefly season,” I stayed in an isolated prairie outside Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. The fireflies came out of the grass each night to light the night like thousands of blinking stars fallen from the sky. But they each flashed on their own schedule, not together.
In 2018, 12,000+ visitors attended an 18-day Fireflies Festival held at the park, coming from as far away as Europe, but now the park is limiting permits stringently.
Rangers require advance permits and only allow 120 vehicles per night into the park. While there, the guidelines for where you can venture are limited and strict. Protecting these insects is their priority. While it may be a favorite pastime for many, don’t even think about trying to capture a firefly in the park.
3. Congaree National Park Boardwalk
There are fewer than a dozen trails at the park, most short since the park is so small. The most popular trail, from which many other trails stem, is the boardwalk trail – for a good reason.
The boardwalk trail is a 2.4-mile wooden boardwalk that loops through the main section of the pine forest marsh near the visitor center. You start at the boardwalk and certain junctions and periodically, you can exit it and take other trails. However, some days the boardwalk is submerged in water. It’s common for the whole park to be flooded.
Still, the trees and the marsh are worth walking because of the smell. By now, I’ve seen and been in plenty of swamps and marsh and bayou, but this is the first one that was more like traditional woods and smelled like a pine forest saturated in water. Instead of smelling swampy and dead, it smelled of longleaf pine.
Aside from the boardwalk, there are several other trails, all easy or moderate, and kayaking and canoeing in Cedar Creek.
Alligators in Congaree National Park
One of the most popular questions upon seeing the flooded boardwalks is: are there alligators? The answer, technically, is maybe.
Water from the Congaree and Wateree Rivers often floods the park and some gators may get in now and then. But the water also carries the nutrients that have kept the ecosystem healthy enough to nurture the champion trees, so it’s a trade-off. In South Carolina, gators are everywhere. Just stay at least 50 feet away and you’ll likely be fine.
4. Congaree National Park Visitor’s Center
In the visitor’s center, there are many displays and information about the park, its history and its future in a more thoughtful presentation than you’ll find at many parks.
Displays feature information about the earliest nomads to populate the area who lived in temporary camps and left evidence of crops and pottery. There were also the “wilderness explorers” from Spain who brought livestock, diseases and colonists. Later displays show the park as a refuge from slavery, with enslaved people seeking freedom from oppression.
In recent years, the focus has been on preservation from logging and building and much of the exhibits for this era focus on what’s been and still needs to be done to protect the land and rare species that call it home.
The center sells the usual souvenirs and a wide variety of books about the area and its history, and the rangers were especially helpful.
5. Congaree National Park Heritage Preserve
Outside the park, you find another 630 acres of historic wilderness called the heritage preserve. Within the preserves, there’s an easy 2.5-mile loop trail loaded with history. The preserve protects rare Atlantic White Cedar that grows along Congaree Creek, but that’s not all.
Archaeologists have found evidence that people have lived in the area for nearly 12,000 years. Some of this is showcased along the trail. There are historic clay quarries where archaeologists discovered arrowheads, pottery and tools. Ponds were once the clay pits of Guignard Brickworks.
The Guignard Brick Works is a national historic site created by the Guignard family in the early 1800s. They made many of the bricks found throughout the South. The brickworks is now defunct, but the complex includes four historic beehive kilns. You can also see old Confederate encampments where soldiers dug trenches and fortifications.
Alligators, here, they say, are likely.
Aside from the expected ability to fish, camp, hike, and paddle – the park has several features that make it worth a trip. When we go to national parks, it’s to see something beautiful and rare, and Congaree is among the rarest of its kind.
Read other stories about South Carolina here.
