South Carolina

South Carolina's coastal Lowcountry was home to the Cusabo, Catawba and other Indigenous nations before English settlers founded Charles Towne in 1670. The colony's economy grew wealthy on rice and indigo plantations worked by enslaved Africans, whose descendants shaped the distinct Gullah Geechee culture, language and cuisine still celebrated along the Sea Islands today.

South Carolina became the eighth state to ratify the Constitution in 1788, then made history again in 1860 as the first state to secede from the Union, and the first shots of the Civil War were fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor in 1861. Reconstruction and the civil rights era brought profound, often painful change across the state through the 20th century.

Charleston has since become one of America's most celebrated historic cities, its cobblestone streets and antebellum architecture carefully preserved alongside a renowned culinary scene built on shrimp, grits and Lowcountry boil. Meanwhile Myrtle Beach and Hilton Head anchor a booming golf-and-beach tourism economy, and inland Greenville has reinvented its old textile-mill downtown into a lively arts and dining destination.