Route: Charleston → Sullivan’s Island → Camden → Cowpens → Kings Mountain. Total mileage: 260. Nonstop driving time: 4½–5 hours.
Down South, this route traces the decisive Southern Campaign through a representative swath of the Palmetto State: the Lowcountry, the Midlands, and Piedmont (upstate). Begin in Charleston, whose elegant pastel houses and harbor belie a turbulent past, inlcuding the city’s 1780 fall to British forces, which marked one of the Revolution’s darkest moments; local sites of interest include Middleton Place and the Heyward-Washington House, the homes of two South Carolinian signers of the Declaration of Independence. Nearby on Sullivan’s Island (with a charming town and beaches), Fort Moultrie (pictured here) commemorates an early 1776 colonial defense that inspired the state’s flag (also worth visiting is nearby Fort Sumter, where the U.S. Civil War started). Then driving inland through pine forests and lowcountry marshland, the road reaches the battlefields of Camden, Cowpens, and Kings Mountain, where militia victories against the British in 1780–81 shifted momentum back toward independence. The terrain gradually rises into the Piedmont’s wooded hills, quieter and less visited than northern sites but crucial to the war’s outcome. Along the way, travelers can explore plantation landscapes, Gullah Geechee cultural history, and some of the South’s finest coastal scenery.
Read more in my post 5 Revolutionary Road Trips to Mark the USA´s 250th Anniversary.
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