I have mentioned this place quite a bit in talking about the natural South. Historically speaking it would not have been overly different from many other places in the lush bottomlands of the greater Southern lowcountry. Yes, its location in the midst of South Carolina meant that it has played host to a number of significant historical events, not the least of which were the exploration of DeSoto and subsequent colonial ventures by the Spanish, as well as being a hiding place from which American nationalists would seek refuge from and use as a striking point against British forces during the Revolutionary War. By and large, however, this land would just be considered more of what people were taking pains to avoid throughout the South. People settled on higher ground where the floods could not reach and the land proved workable enough to not necessitate making an existence out of a swamp. The mosquitoes alone would have sent me packing, as least as soon as summer came around!
Time pressed on, and with it came development. The end of the antebellum economic system based on slavery meant that the a greater amount of industrialization came to cities like Columbia and Atlanta, along with railroads and a noticeable increase in population. The swamps were still less than desirable to settle in, but as free and open land became harder to find, they too would fall before the path of civilization. What's more, there were still incredible trees here the likes of which the first Europeans had seen when they landed on these shores centuries before. Picture then the typical avarice found in your timber baron and it does not take long to imagine that the giants were seen wrapped in gift paper for the taking. Baldcypress (Taxodium Distichum) grew this big, and had an even greater advantage to the consumer: extreme resistance to decay and rot. What else would one expect of a tree that basically thrives when getting its feet wet? When the forests of northern Michigan and Wisconsin started looking a bit thin of those equally valuable Eastern White Pines (Pinus Strobus) as the end of the nineteenth century arrived, northern millers also started turning an eye to new Southern potential. With so many eyes on the scenery, it is a wonder that most of the riparian South held out as long as it did.
Congaree was fortunate, however, in having a rather broad floodplain which made extraction more difficult than in many places. Even Chicago's Francis Beilder, one of the continent's most resourceful and determined timber barons, found that the logistics of extraction were just not economically feasible to make a clear cut of the place. His company, which by the early twentieth century had purchased the land the park now sits on, left it alone. Come 1969, prices for timber eventually caught up to the logistical difficulties. Even as the Tar Sands of Alberta are now tapped for petroleum in an age when the costs of the process of extraction are cheaper than the raw material, so too then did the same reality come to nearly claim Congaree.
The late sixties were a different sort of time, however. Even as social upheaval changed the face of the continent and was putting a fight to sexism, racism, and a lot of different conventional ways of thinking, so too had come to pass a new environmental consciousness which had dawned in the wake of Rachel Carson giving everyone a reminder about the danger of our artificial domination of the biosphere. By the end of the decade, a new appreciation for the science of ecology had awakened local fervor for such otherwise ignored sites like Hoosier Prairie. What had once been viewed up as a typical Midwestern abandoned field was rediscovered as a true remnant of an otherwise glossed over tallgrass prairie. In the South, the old bottomland finally got the same recognition, and the Sierra Club and others started to fight for Congaree. By 1976, just as the locals back in Indiana got a taste and rush of feeling for something they had almost entirely lost, the locals down in deep South Carolina got the same thing for their majestic Congaree. That's what makes this place so special, really. Congaree is an amazing link back to the historical, indeed wild and primordial, South. In an age when political divisions were already working toward the societal breaking point that they find themselves at today, you had all sorts of politicians suddenly drop camp, including even Strom Thurmond, better known for turning back the clock in other less than lovely ways. All of a sudden people started looking at just how far we had come and just how much we were willing to throw away.
I mention the White Pine logging and Hoosier re-discovery in this post because of just how important Congaree is in relation to the rest of the, well, world conservation movement. All too often national parks are thought of as areas that protect outstanding natural scenic beauty and little else, and while Congaree does boast incredible spires of trees in a nearly vanished virgin Southern bottomland, we really only see this now after the park has been in existence for a decade and has been officially protected since 1976. People went nuts over the Sequoias as soon as they were found by us second-born North Americans; a swamp or a floodplain would take much longer to appreciate. Hell, people still don't appreciate why Cuyahoga Valley got full national park status and probably will not for a long time to come; why be giddy over your typical Ohio low-relief ravine? There is no towering cliff-face or even old growth forest there, it's just the natural backyard with a few historic trinkets... right? Guess what, people thought the same thing about your background cypress swamp named Congaree. People thought the same thing about Joshua Tree National Park until Minerva Hoyt spoke up on behalf of the Mojave. People thought the same thing about the Everglades (a much better example for this soggy part of the world) until Marjory Douglas told the rest of us to give a damn.
Congaree got a reprieve, and in comparison with some other places like the tallgrass prairie or some bog somewhere on the Canadian Shield, it is easy to see why this place is special. After all, the trees here are something amazing! But like all those other places, what is most special about Congaree is how it keeps us connected not only with the wilderness, but with our connection to it. I may constantly bring up the insane June visit I had among hordes of mosquitoes, but the fact is that this was a wonderful time to visit, to see just how comfortable this Northern Ontarian had otherwise become with the the ease of modern convenience. It is easy to point out just how easily we can lose historical memory when we demolish a building or change a school curriculum to focus on more "practical" subjects, but it is even easier when do lose that "background" swamp, desert, prairie, etc. that we had to remind us what existence itself was like for those who brought us into our own. So what does Congaree do for us that other parks do not to the same level of consciousness?
Let's head north for a little bit.
In Canada our national parks got to the same start the way that yours did. We had our pre-Carson conservationists who had a sense of the overall importance of nature for the soul, you know, like your Roosevelts or Muirs or such. They saw Banff and made a park out of it (yes, there is more to it than that, but you get the idea) just as down here you had Yellowstone and realized what a unique natural place it was and did the same thing. After this, though, the Canadian concept of national parks changed. Perhaps starting as early as 1893 when Algonquin was made into a (then) national park in an otherwise fairly typical section of southern Canadian Shield highlands, park makers got to thinking that in addition to protecting the outstanding areas, perhaps we should start protecting some of the more pristine or exemplary areas of particular biomes across the country. Today we thus have a place like Point Pelee National Park set aside to show us what is so special about the southern Great Lakes and the Carolinian (eastern-mixed) forest, a place which aside from being a bird-watcher's paradise would not otherwise be seen as significant in the national or continental scheme of things.
Back South now.
In Congaree we have an amazing park which does this very same thing, celebrating not just the lowland South Carolina landscape but that of the riparian South in general. In essence, Congaree is amazing not just for its incredible forests but also because it is perhaps the first "regional" park of its kind according to the Canadian concept. It has been joined recently by a California Chaparral version, Pinnacles National Park, which gives me hope for the future for the central prairies and other "background" scenery. Yes, there have been many parks created for different purposes in the past which could easily fit into this line of conservation theory (Great Basin National Park really stands out in this regard), but Congaree strikes me as being a huge victory for this idea in general, and it helps that the place is downright beautiful and even a little savage. Want to see what I saw? Take a trip down the boardwalk with me next post, but in the meantime check out some of their amazing pictures at their various websites.
Main website
Congaree National Park Facebook Page
Congaree National Park Twitter Page
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