Along the Wire Road

RIDGEVILLE — Workers ran telegraph lines from Charleston to Augusta in the late 19th century, making their way through the Lowcountry past marvels like an American Indian tribe, stagecoach houses, sprawling blackwater swamps and a quarter-mile-long earthen dam.

The Wire Road still goes by them.

This little known two-lane road outside Ridgeville rambles its way for more than 20 country miles through a trove of Dorchester County history. In an attempt to keep the heritage intact, Pete Weathers, the county's representative to the SC National Heritage Corridor, is trying to get the road named "A Story You Don't Know."

It would be part of a series that corridor organizers are developing to showcase "off the beaten path" destinations to attract more tourists out there, said Michelle McCollum, corridor president.

The effort is under way as dirt and sand mines begin to line the road, supplying construction projects, and the first subdivision development tracts have been sold.

"It's a jewel we need to protect," Weathers said. "It will bring people into Ridgeville and maybe Grover. If it's a tourism draw, maybe it will protect it from over-development. At least that's what I hope."

"If you don't save these things so the young people can look at them, you can't talk about the good old days and how things ought to be done," said mid-county historian Jim Way.

Hop on in. The trip is worth the ride:

Mile 5 from Ridgeville: The Edisto Indian community. The Natchez-Kusso are survivors of Lowcountry tribes, chiefly the Kusso and Natchez, whose remnants banded together in the wake of the European conquest and settlement. They commonly have been called Edisto because they live along the Edisto River but aren't related to the lost Edisto Island tribe. They are governed by a tribal council and hold ceremonial powwows, but visitors looking for teepees are going to be disappointed. The population of 800 lives like any other country community. Their heritage is in their swampy river environs.

Mile 7.5: The ghostly cypress bottom of Four Holes Swamp is nearly a mile wide where the road crosses. The 60-mile-long swamp is one of the few largely intact black-water systems left, home to rare plants, alligator, mink, huge cypress knees and gar fish. Indian arrowheads, a mastodon hip bone and a prehistoric great shark tooth the size of a large hand have been found there. The original crossing was a toll bridge; it's shown on an 1825 map. The permit for it required that the bridge be built high enough for boats and logging rafts to go under.

Mile 10.2: On the left is the Clayton House. It was built somewhere around 1854 and was a stagecoach house until the early 1900s. It is privately owned. The community is called Sand Ridge because it sits on vast deposits left by the ancient ocean that covered much of state's coastal plain. The deposits are one of the reasons so many mines now operate along the road.

Mile 14.5: As you reach the Indian Field Swamp bridge, look to the right through the bottom greenery for a huge mound built across the bottom. It's part of an earthen mill pond dam that snakes for a quarter mile and in places is 14 feet high. Its spillage once powered a saw mill; the dam is old enough that it's mentioned in the mid-19th century diary of plantation owner David Gavin, who lived upstream.

Mile 20: The tiny town of Grover. Named for President Grover Cleveland when its post office was built, it was called Grover because the state already had a Cleveland. It once was a bustling stop along a north-south coastal route; Interstate 95 "poked its eyes out," Way said.

Mile 23: The Koger-Murray-Carroll House. The 200-year-old plantation manor and stagecoach house is a National Register Historic Site. It's on the left just before Interstate 95, being restored by the Upper Dorchester County Historical Society. The plantation once spread 10 miles along the Edisto River. George Washington never slept there, but Marquis de Lafayette, the famous Revolutionary War general, is rumored to have. The house with massive black cypress beams took 17 years to build; slaves used whipsaws to cut the hard-as-rock cypress into 40-foot-long lumber. The house is said to be haunted and stains on the upper floor that don't wash off are said to be blood. Nineteenth century graffiti can be found on windowsills and closet doors. Out back is the biggest pecan tree that Way has ever seen.

Mile 24: Appleby's Methodist Church. Standing since at least the 1830s, the church might be the oldest existing church in Dorchester County. Two front doors allowed men to enter on one side, women on the other. Slaves filed in through a rear door. Each group was partitioned around a center pulpit.

Reach Bo Petersen at 937-5744 or bpetersen@postandcourier.com.