Charleston SC to Georgetown SC

We departed Charleston South Carlina a little before 6:30 AM and arrive in Georgetown South Carolina at about 2:30 PM.

We took an Uber to downtown Georgetown and I toured the Rice Museum. I learned that Georgetown was once one of the four richest towns in the United States. Its wealth was based on rice cultivation and to a lesser extent Indigo cultivation. The area has six rivers that provided abundant water to the lowland Cyprus swamps. The white settlers used their numerous black slaves to clear the swamps, install earthen berms around the rice fields, make and install wooden drainage pipes. and massive wooden gates to control the flow of water. It took up to years of slave labor to clear the land and make it ready for rice planting. Once the fields were in place, Georgetown became the center of rice growing and export. Once the rice was harvested, more slave labor was needed to process the rice to make it ready for export. The finished rice was immensely profitable and it made Georgetown a wealthy city. The planter families had houses in Georgetown but they spent their time in houses elsewhere that were more healthy. The rice fields were a haven for mosquitos and malaria was a constant problem. The blacks who inherited cycle cell enema were somewhat less vulnerable to malaria, but malaria killed many of the slaves working the rice. The rice business flourished until the abolition of slavery. It hung on until the 1930 when sharecropping ended. Rice production moved to other parts of the country where mechanization was more practical.