Part 19: Congaree Crown Jewel

My first introduction to what is now the Congaree National Park was back in 1967 via an old

issue of SC Wildlifemagazine.

On the inside of the back cover was a photograph of well- known conservationist and outdoor writer Harry Hampton standing by the biggest bald cypress tree I had ever seen. The buttress of the tree was so large it made Hampton, who stood 6'3", seem small.

I wrote Mr. Hampton a letter, inquiring where such a tree could be found. In his prompt reply he told me it was in the Congaree Swamp, just a 20- minute drive south of Columbia. He also included news clippings showing pictures of very large loblolly pines, sweetgums, and other hardwoods in Congaree and told of efforts to save the place from the chainsaw. He closed his letter with a standing invitation to come see it as his guest.

I took Mr. Hampton up on his offer over the Easter holidays of 1968. He was 50 years older than I, but his attitude towards conservation and saving wild places was 50 years ahead of his time. We spent a beautiful April morning seeing the swamp. His long legs also walked my young ones off.

Cypress knees, upshoots from the root system, provide natural sculpture for Congaree National Park. I was truly amazed at the size of some of Congaree's forest giants - sweetgums and loblolly pines five feet in diameter, chestnut oaks six feet across, cherrybark oaks seven feet across, and cypress and tupelo gums with swollen buttresses more than 20 feet around. These giants were part of a highly complex and diverse ecosystem that featured over 90 species of woody plants and trees.

The Congaree fit the description of so many forests I had read about that once spread over Colonial America - places that had harbored wolves, panthers, bears, Carolina parakeets, and passenger pigeons. It was indeed, a forest worthy of ivory- billed woodpeckers.

During the citizen campaign of the 1970s to save Congaree, it became tagged with the name, "Redwoods East" and "Forest of Champions." It's no wonder as there is probably no other place of similar size in North America that hosts the number of champion- size trees, the biggest of their kind anywhere, as Congaree National Park does. Currently, there are six national champions - loblolly pine, sweetgum, laurel oak, water hickory, deciduous holly, and swamp tupelo - in the park, along with nearly two dozen state champions.

The national champion sweetgum at Congaree National Park is nearly 17 feet in circumference and measures 160 feet tall. Some years ago Dr. Robert Jones, then a forest ecologist at Auburn, and his graduate students documented the Congaree as being one of the tallest hardwood forests in the temperate world. Because we're built close to the ground, it's hard for us to comprehend such tall trees until one falls down in a wind storm. That's when you can pace off a 160- foot tall loblolly pine or a 150 foot sweetgum. Even the lowly persimmon, normally a small to medium- size weedy tree of fence rows and field borders, grows to more than 120 feet tall in Congaree.

The tallest known tree in South Carolina is the national champion loblolly pine at the Park that measures nearly 170 feet - 17 stories - high. And the researchers who climbed and measured this pine also reported a very good view of the Columbia skyline.

Dr. Jones's graduate students also aged some of the loblolly pines at Congaree using an increment borer. The well- known large loblolly pine by the boardwalk near Weston Lake, measuring more than five feet across, is 250 years old, making it one of the oldest known loblollies anywhere. It has also come to be called the "Richland County Pine" because this one tree dates the entire official history of Richland County from its inception in 1785.

It is wonderful that Harry Hampton lived to see the place that he had worked so hard to protect for so many years became a reality. On October 18, 1976, President Gerald Ford signed a bill adding Congaree Swamp National Monument to the latest jewel in the National Park system. In 2003, Congaree was upgraded to a National Park, as befits the last stand of old- growth bottomland hardwood forest left in America.

If you haven't had a chance to see South Carolina's only national park, and I'm always surprised how many from the Columbia area have not, the upcoming fall is a good time to visit - temperatures are cooler, the bugs fewer, and a surprising amount of leaf color is present.

The park offers daily guided tours as well as free (but reservations are needed) guided canoe trips on the weekends. A 2.5 mile handicap accessible boardwalk loop is a good intro to the park, and for more inquiring minds, more than 25 miles of walking trails beckon. For more information, contact the park at 803- 776- 4396 or see their website www.nps.gov/cong

(Next week: Poinsett State Park)