South Carolina

In 1776, the British Navy sailed into Charleston Harbor expecting an easy win. They fired over a thousand cannonballs at a half-finished fort on Sullivan's Island. But the walls were built from palmetto logs, and the spongy wood didn't splinter. It absorbed the cannonballs like a sponge soaks up water.

Colonel William Moultrie and about 435 soldiers held the fort for nine hours and sent the British fleet limping away. The palmetto tree ended up on the state flag, and South Carolina still celebrates the victory every year on Carolina Day.

The Cherokee, Catawba, and Yamasee peoples lived across South Carolina long before Europeans arrived. English colonists founded Charleston in 1670, and it quickly became one of the wealthiest cities in North America, built almost entirely on the labor of enslaved people.

Nearly half of all enslaved Africans brought to North America came through Charleston's harbor. Many were taken to rice plantations in the Lowcountry.

Working in isolation on the Sea Islands, they kept their African languages, traditions, and foodways alive, creating a unique culture called Gullah Geechee that still thrives today.

On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to leave the Union. Less than four months later, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, starting the Civil War. The 34-hour bombardment was the first battle of a war that would kill more than 600,000 Americans.

Take a ferry to Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor and stand where the Civil War began. Visit the International African American Museum at Gadsden's Wharf, built on the site where tens of thousands of enslaved Africans first set foot in America.

Walk the streets of historic Charleston, then head to the Lowcountry to explore Gullah Geechee culture on St. Helena Island at the Penn Center. Hit the beach at Myrtle Beach or paddle through the old-growth floodplain forests at Congaree National Park.