Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site - Part III - History Trail

After leaving the animal area we began to explore the other trails on the grounds of Charles Towne Landing.

Interpretive Trails: The park provides seven miles of paved and unpaved trails. Walk along the marsh or through the 80 acres of park-style gardens, featuring thousands of azaleas, camellias and live oaks, some several hundred years old.
History Trail: Visitors may also stroll through the original settlement area of 1670-1680 complete with reconstructed fortifications, protective palisade and crop garden.
--from Charles Towne Landing SHS website

Left towards the history trail!

Not only is there history of European colonization on the site, but even older Native American history.

This sculpture depicts the Kiawah chief, or Cassique who "invited the new English settlers to build their village here at Albemarle Point."

This historic bathtub, probably built in the early 1800s, is the first of its kind that archaeologists have identified in Charleston.  It is unique because its owner placed it in the plantation house instead of a separate outbuilding.
--from exhibit signage

This reproduction of the colony's palisade wall shows how they protected themselves against threats that could have come from Native Americans or the Spanish.

Public punishment was a part of colonial life.  Lashes or the stocks were commonly utilized instead of long-term imprisonment.

It was raining at this point so I didn't get a close look at the garden.

We rushed through the rain into this reproduction house that illustrated the type of "common lodging" that may have been used for servants.  Inside a first-person interpreter told us mroe about the dwelling and what life would have been like.

Once the rain died down we headed out the other side and I got a better picture of the building.

Charles Towne was founded shortly after the end of an Anglo-Spanish war and was located on land also claimed by the Spanish, so the colonists had reason to be afraid of attack.

Normally there is a ship docked here that you can board, the Adventure, but sadly it was undergoing its annual maintenance.

This skeleton of a ship "depicts the earliest stage of shipbuilding--hull construction.  It starts with the ship's backbone, or keel, and then the stern, ribs, and sternpost are attached."  This is the same size as the Adventure normally docked nearby.

The ship's skeleton was really interesting to examine.

Saint Augustine, in Spanish Florida, was much closer than many British cities.

The next portion of the path was over a boardwalk in marshy land.

The view was beautiful as we walked.

This reproduction building "represents the construction techniques that might have been used at early Charles Towne" as it isn't known for sure what methods were utilized.

This side shows you wattle and daub construction methods.

The actual remnants of the original palisade wall are in an enclosed structure.

Here is what the excavated area looks like inside.

This house was being used for a wedding so we weren't able to get very close.

The view down the aisle of trees was especially gorgeous.

We saw what looked like an egret by the water, though at first it was so still I wasn't sure if it was fake or a real bird.

A minute later it took off flying.

All in all Charles Towne Landing is a wonderful state park to visit.  You can see even more photos by opening the entire album.  If you're in the area definitely make plans to visit.

~Matt

Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site - Part II - Animal Forest

After seeing the exhibits inside at Charles Towne Landing we decided to head outside to see what we could discover.  We were pleasantly surprised by how much there was to enjoy outside.

The Animal Forest at Charles Towne Landing, a 22-acre natural habitat zoo, is home to a variety of species that inhabited Carolina at the time when this site was a newly settled English colony. Through informational signs along the paved trail, you are reminded of challenges faced by those pioneers, of daily life in a wild world, of predators and prey.
--from Charles Towne Landing SHS website

The first thing we saw was a warning about alligators, but we didn't end up seeing any loose.

I love old split rail fences, they're quite picturesque.

We started out heading towards the Animal Forest.

This was once a slave cemetery that had many goods excavated in the 1970s as it wasn't realized why they were in the location.

Not far past the old cemetery we came across the entrance to the animal forest.

The Animal Forest features many different animals that were native to the area at the time European colonization started.

The first actual animal area we entered was an aviary.

We walked out onto a boardwalk into the middle of the area.

I spotted what looked like an egret or heron towards the edge.

We didn't get a close view of the red wolves in their enclosure, but you can see them if you look in the shady area under the trees.

The otters were frolicking in the wader when we came by.

Sadly we never did see any Classroom deer or Turkey restrooms, we also tried to avoid the Bison skunks as they sounded extremely smelly!

The bald eagle had a temporary sign up saying it was under medical observation.

We didn't get to see any elk close up, but we did spot some.

Turkeys and vultures were in another aviary, but not one you could walk through.

Here we finally saw some bison in the distance.

It wasn't a traditional zoo, but it was fun to walk through and realize how many different animals originally lived in the Carolinas.  After leaving the animals we headed out into the historic area, but I think I'll save that for the next post.

~Matt

Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site - Part I - Museum

After we got off the Fort Sumter ferry we headed over the bridge we'd admired earlier and drove across the main part of Charleston to the original settlement across another river.

Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site sits on a marshy point, located off the Ashley River, where a group of English settlers landed in 1670 and established what would become the birthplace of the Carolina colony. Charles Towne Landing introduces visitors to the earliest colonial history of Charleston. Interact with hands-on exhibits in the Visitor Center, talk to knowledgeable staff members, and take an audio tour on the self-guided history trail.
--from Charles Towne Landing SHS website

Once you enter the property you drive down a road flanked by beautiful old trees.

We parked in the parking lot and headed towards the visitor center.

Once inside we paid for our admission and prepared to explore.

We also received this great map of the property to help us navigate.

We started out inside exploring the exhibits about Charles Towne, "the first successful English colony in Carolina."
In this 17th-century settlement, you will meet English, African, Barbadian and Native American residents, all of whom helped shape this unique place.  Each of these four groups had quite different ways of viewing the world, from their social and spiritual beliefs to the foods they ate, the houses they built and the clothes they wore.  Yet each group made its own distinctive contributions to Charles Towne and to the future state of South Carolina.
--from exhibit signage

What did people think the world looked like four hundred years ago?  Certainly it was much different than our modern satellite-enhanced maps.

The exhibits were very well done and included a number of interactive elements as well as plenty of artifacts.

I certainly appreciated the number of maps.  This one helps put the different settlements in different parts of North America into perspective.

The first portion of the exhibits covered the history of the royal grant to settle Carolina, how the colony was organized, and what the land was like.  Here you can see many of the original Lords Proprietors.

People in Europe were often fascinated by the new plants, animals, and customs discovered in the North America.

Three ships (the Carolina, Albemarle, and Port Royal) were loaded up for the voyage to the new colony.  It was interesting to see the list of different items the took with them.

The ships departed England in August 1669 and arrived in Barbados in late October.

I hadn't realized that the ships spent some time in Barbados, at the time "the richest English colony in the New World" and studied its plantation system as a model for the colony they would build.

The exhibits did a good job of presenting the multiple perspectives of the early colonists from the wealthy down to the servants and the slaves.

It is interesting how many of the early colonists were looking for cash crops--they really were looking to make money rather than starting self-sustaining agricultural economies.

The trip from Barbados north to Carolina took five months and was almost a complete disaster.
In Barbados, all three Carolina-bound ships were damaged and the Albemarle was destroyed by a big storm just before the group planned to leave.  (The Albemarle passengers survived to board a replacement ship, the Three Brothers.)  The Port Royal wrecked two months later in the Bahamas.  Many of her passengers died.  Heavy storms forced the Carolina to stop at least twice, once at the island of Nevis and again at Bermuda.  In Bermuda, Sir John Yeamans abandoned the expedition and returned to Barbados.  Many of the indentured servants onboard were also reluctant to continue the voyage.  But the English governor there threatened them with additional years of service, and they sailed on.
--from exhibit signage

This interactive exhibit helped you see how easy it was for sailors to get off course if they made a small error in navigation.

These animal illustrations certainly are interesting and don't match what I've seen of these animals today.

At this point the exhibits opened up as they started to explore the actual conditions in the colony.

Displays like this that explained different perspectives were great to see.  Imagine what it would feel like today if strangers just showed up off your coast and totally disrupted your life.

When reading about the population along the coast I am reminded about the ideas in Charles Mann's 1491 and just wonder how much of this was different than it had been a couple centuries before.

Unfortunately part of the legacy of the Carolina colony is one of slavery.  I found it interesting to know that it only took a generation for slaves to become a majority of the population.

The floor in this area of the exhibits is a reproduction of "a drawing of the remnants of the first building archaeologists found...  The brown circles on the floor indicate man-made holes in the ground more than one foot deep--probably post holes." (from exhibit signage)

There were more interactive exhibits that encouraged people to figure out how much work it would have taken to feed their family.

The kids also enjoyed costumes that they could try on.

This room display contained full-size reproductions of many artifacts that have been discovered in local excavations.

Over the years, the original Charles Towne site here at Albemarle Point was sold to numerous owners.  Sometime after the colony moved across the river, a French Huguenot named James Le Sade came to own much of the land.  Then, during the American Revolutionary War, British troops built fortifications here (remnants of which have been found by archaeologists)....  The site's final private owners, Ferdinanda Legare Waring and Joseph Waring, sold the property to the state of South Carolina in 1969.  Soon afterwards the South Carolina Tricentennial Commission transformed the Warings' farm into the state historic site we call "Charles Towne Landing."
--from exhibit signage

After we'd finished touring the exhibits we decided to head outside.

However I think this post has been long enough, so I'll wrap this up here and continue on with the outside portion of our visit next time.

~Matt