Our Land
While Heathwood Hall is mindful that the earth’s bounty is plentiful, our current and future decisions relating to growth must maintain a philosophy directly cognizant to the issue of sustainability. To be sustainable is to have a balanced approach in making solid decisions that affect our environment with the least degrading impact while recognizing three factors: social, economic and environment. While Heathwood Hall’s sustainability philosophy and statement will continue to allow our community to grow, they will simultaneously allow for the preservation of our treasured campus.
The land encompassing Heathwood Hall has been no stranger to visitors in the past. Its diverse geophysical characteristics, flora, fauna, and abundant resources allowed for thriving human occupation long before the first Europeans arrived and settled. Across the Congaree River bordering the Heathwood Hall property lay the Old Cherokee Trail that was used heavily by Native Americans making their way from the mountains to the sea. Dating back 10,000 to 12,000 years, hunter gatherer societies used the area in bands of 20-30 individuals as seasonal hunting grounds. Evidences of this occupation are the many pottery shards and arrowheads that have been located on the campus grounds by faculty and students throughout the years. In the winter, clans of approximately 450 would meet in the surrounding areas to choose mates, and they then made their way down the Congaree River in dugout canoes.
Some of the first European pioneers settled the area around 1718 along the banks of the river and constructed what was known as Fort Congaree. This encampment eventually grew into the Saxe Gotha Township which was formed around 1731. As the area continued to grow, the land around Heathwood Hall was cleared for agricultural purposes due to its rich bottomland soil that allowed huge crops of cotton and tobacco to be harvested. This “rich” soil was the basis of the county seat’s being named as “Richland” officially in 1785.
Settlement around the area, specifically along the river, played pivotal roles in the Revolutionary War. General Francis Marion, the “Swamp Fox”, and General Thomas Sumter, the “Gamecock”, along with other patriots involved in the fight for independence utilized the area’s lush landscape as staging grounds for guerilla warfare type strategies to harass the enemy. The area was also the location of some of the horrors of war, infamously being burned by Major General William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army, as part of his scorched earth policy, as he marched north from Savannah during the War Between the States in late 1864 and early 1865.
However, despite the destructiveness left behind from war, Columbia and Richland County continued to grow. Today, the pockets of forests, approximately 70-year-old mixed hardwoods and softwoods around Heathwood Hall offer a glimpse of how the land may have looked over 300 years ago.
Columbia, SC 29201