9 South Carolina Towns Worth Visiting Even If You Only Have One Afternoon

Historic Camden opens its Pirate Fest gates today for lantern tours and dockside reenactors.

The Revolutionary War site hosting it is small enough to walk end to end before lunch.

That’s true of a lot of South Carolina towns, where the whole reason to stop fits inside an afternoon.

These are the South Carolina towns worth visiting even if you only have one afternoon.

1. Abbeville

Abbeville’s whole downtown sits on one square.

The 1908 Opera House anchors Court Square.

The Opera House stays open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. for self-guided tours.

Its winter and summer performance seasons draw more than 20,000 visitors a year to Abbeville.

The county courthouse and a Civil War-era cannon sit close enough to touch from the Opera House steps.

The whole loop takes minutes.

That leaves time for the antique shops and diners lining the square’s other sides.

2. Cheraw

Cheraw’s Town Green puts a jazz legend’s statue within sight of three other stops.

Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie was born in Cheraw in 1917.

A seven-foot bronze statue of him has stood on the Town Green since 2002.

The Theatre on the Green next door started out as the movie house Gillespie snuck into as a kid.

Town Hall, its clock, and Market Hall all sit within 0.1 miles of the statue.

Not much walking is involved.

Cheraw runs a South Carolina Jazz Festival honoring Gillespie on the same green the third week of every October.

3. Ninety Six

Ninety Six shares its unusual name with the national historic site just outside its downtown.

One stop covers both.

The site’s earthworks, a reconstructed stockade, and the underground remains of a 1781 siege tunnel all sit on a single walking trail.

Rangers keep the visitor center open Wednesday through Sunday.

The grounds themselves stay open every day from dawn to dusk.

One trail covers it all.

Walk it at an easy pace.

The entrance gate closes at 4:30.

A monument along the trail honors James Birmingham, whom the National Park Service calls the first South Carolinian killed in the Revolutionary War.

4. Bishopville

Bishopville’s Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden turns one man’s hand-shaped junipers and hollies into a walk that takes less than an hour.

Self-taught topiary artist Pearl Fryar started shaping the trees decades ago.

The garden he built stays open Tuesday through Saturday all year, fall included, with no posted admission fee.

There’s no rush.

The garden has no marked route, so visitors linger at whichever shape catches their eye.

Bishopville’s small downtown sits close enough for a second stop before you head out.

5. Camden

Camden traces its start to a 1732 survey ordered by King George II.

That makes it the oldest inland town in South Carolina.

Historic Camden’s Revolutionary War park sits right off downtown.

Joseph Kershaw’s restored mansion and the 1780 battle’s earthworks stay open for self-guided tours Monday through Saturday.

That town-site core is a separate stop from the Camden and Hobkirk’s Hill battlefields elsewhere in the county.

Seeing the mansion and earthworks doesn’t mean covering the rest of the park.

One visit is plenty.

Pirate Fest takes over those same grounds every September.

This year’s lantern tours and reenactors run September 17-19.

6. McClellanville

McClellanville’s whole historic waterfront fits inside a village of fewer than 700 people.

A historical marker on Pinckney Street says McClellanville is best known for its shrimp fleet and seafood industries.

Planters from the Santee Delta built the village’s first homes near Jeremy Creek in the late 1850s and early 1860s.

That era also gave Pinckney Street its oldest houses.

The 1,000-year-old Deerhead Oak anchors the edge of town, its branches still shading the spot where the first store opened in 1867.

The Village Museum traces the rest of the town’s history, from its earliest fishing camps to the seafood trade still running the docks today.

You won’t need a car.

7. Pendleton

Pendleton’s whole downtown wraps around one village green ringed by antique shops, boutiques, and restaurants.

The old Farmers Society Meeting Hall anchors one corner of the green.

A restaurant called 1826 Bistro now runs inside it, named for the hall’s founding year.

Hunter’s Store across the way served as the town’s commercial hub back in 1850.

It now houses the area’s visitor center.

It’s all one loop.

A farmers market takes over Main Street every Friday from May through October.

A fall visit still catches it.

8. Walhalla

Walhalla sits at the base of the Blue Ridge foothills.

Its two biggest draws sit inside the same small park a few minutes from downtown.

Stumphouse Tunnel runs a quarter mile into the mountain at a steady 50 degrees.

Issaqueena Falls drops into view at the end of a short walk from that same parking lot.

Both stops sit inside Stumphouse Park, where a $5 vehicle fee covers the whole visit.

Neither takes an hour.

Clemson University once cured its blue cheese inside that same tunnel, relying on the steady 50-degree air instead of a refrigerator.

9. Edgefield

Edgefield's Courthouse Square has kept roughly the same footprint for more than 230 years.

Ten governors and five lieutenant governors of South Carolina came from Edgefield.

The town has called itself the "Home of Ten Governors" ever since.

A monument on the square lists the governors by name.

A statue nearby honors Strom Thurmond, born in Edgefield in 1902.

He served in the Senate until age 100, retiring in 2003.

The monument, the Thurmond statue, and the storefronts around them all face the same square, an easy loop on foot.

None of it requires driving.