The South Carolina Outdoors

Where should you go outdoors in South Carolina?

Start with Congaree National Park, Hunting Island State Park and Huntington Beach State Park, then use the guides on this page to choose by what you want to do. Trails, hours and fees change, so check each park's official page before you go.

Making a drive of it? See South Carolina road trips, or browse places by region.

Parks and sights worth the trip

• Congaree National Park: The largest intact old-growth bottomland hardwood forest left in the Southeast, with national and state champion trees.
• Hunting Island State Park: Five miles of beach and a lighthouse with 167 steps, moved 1.3 miles inland in 1889.
• Huntington Beach State Park: Three miles of beach, more than 300 bird species and a Moorish-style winter home called Atalaya.
• Devils Fork State Park: The only public access to the 7,565 acres of Lake Jocassee, with some waterfalls reachable only by boat.
• Table Rock State Park: 3,083 acres of mountain country, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, on the Foothills Trail.
• Caesars Head State Park: An overlook at 3,208 feet, a 420-foot waterfall and thousands of migrating hawks each fall.
• Woods Bay State Park: One of the last large Carolina bays on the coastal plain, with a 1,150-foot boardwalk over a cypress swamp.
• Poinsett State Park: The Mountains of the Midlands: 1,000 acres of diverse landscape, from a taste of the mountains to the low country.
• Stumphouse Park: An unfinished railroad tunnel with about 1,600 feet to explore, where a Clemson professor once tested molding cheese, and Issaqueena Falls beside it.
• Cowpens National Battlefield: A Revolutionary War pasture where Daniel Morgan's double envelopment beat Banastre Tarleton's British force.
• Kings Mountain National Military Park: The site of the American victory of October 7, 1780, the first major patriot win after the British invasion of Charleston that May.