2020 Nature Spots Guide

On February 17th 1864, the city of Charleston, deep in the throes of the Civil War, made history with a small 8 men crew that was stationed in a revolutionary new vessel in the Charleston Harbor. The H.L. Hunley was an experimental new addition to the Confederate's fleet of warships, but on that clear but chilly evening, it would land in military history books for generations to come as the first submarine to successfully take down another wartime vessel.

Charleston County and the city of Charleston, its county seat, are the most historic locations in the state. English settlers arrived in the colony of Carolina in 1670 and established a town at Albemarle Point on the west bank of the Ashley River. The settlement, named Charles Town in honor of King Charles II of England, was subsequently moved a few miles away to a peninsula between the Ashley and Cooper rivers. Charles Town (renamed Charleston in 1783) was the political, social, and economic center of South Carolina throughout the colonial and ante-bellum periods, and it served as the state capital until 1790.