5 Arguments Georgia and South Carolina Have Never Settled

Georgia’s and South Carolina’s state park systems can’t agree on the name of a lake they share.

That’s just one example of when these two states aren’t willing to budge.

These are the arguments Georgia and South Carolina have never settled.

1. Whose Barbecue Sauce Wins

South Carolina treats barbecue sauce as a birthright worth arguing about.

The state’s signature style is a tangy, mustard-based sauce that food writers treat as unique to South Carolina.

Georgia disagrees.

Traditional Georgia barbecue sauce runs tomato and vinegar instead, thinner and sharper than South Carolina’s mustard blend.

Cookbooks on each side of the line treat the other state’s version as barely barbecue at all.

Cross the Savannah River going either direction, and the sauce on the table changes before the sweet tea does.

Neither side is backing down.

Pitmasters on both banks insist their squeeze bottle beats whatever the other side is pouring.

2. Whether This Still Counts as a Rivalry

Georgia and South Carolina have played football against each other 76 times since 1894.

Georgia has won 55 of those meetings, lost 19, and tied 2.

That lopsided history is exactly why some fans and national sportswriters say the matchup barely qualifies as a rivalry at all.

Georgia has also won 22 of the 32 meetings played since South Carolina joined the Southeastern Conference in 1992.

Under head coach Kirby Smart, Georgia has won five of the last six meetings by an average of more than 26 points.

Georgia fans point to numbers like that as proof there’s no argument left to have.

South Carolina fans don’t agree.

Their receipts are two wins, not talking points.

A three-game winning streak from 2010 to 2012 still comes up in Columbia every football season.

So does 2019, when South Carolina knocked off a top-ten Georgia team in Athens.

Whether that record settles things or those two upsets keep the argument alive depends on which fan base gets asked.

3. What to Call the Lake on the Line

Georgia and South Carolina’s state park systems can’t settle on the name of the reservoir they share on the Savannah River.

The 71,100-acre lake sits right on the state line, near Augusta.

Georgia’s state park system calls it Clarks Hill Lake.

South Carolina picked a different name for the same water.

South Carolina’s state park system calls it Lake Thurmond instead.

The Army Corps of Engineers, which built the dam, uses yet a third name for it: J. Strom Thurmond Dam and Lake.

Cross the bridge near Augusta, and the same 71,100 acres of water carries three different official names, depending who’s asked.

4. Who Owns the Peach State

Georgia has carried the Peach State nickname for generations.

South Carolina’s agriculture department publicly challenged that nickname in 2018, claiming on social media that its harvest beat Georgia’s by three times over.

Figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) didn’t back up that big a gap.

Georgia’s agriculture department shot back on social media that its peaches taste sweeter, never mind whose harvest is bigger.

The actual harvest numbers still favor South Carolina, which typically grows about twice as many peaches as Georgia most years, according to USDA figures.

Neither state’s agriculture department has backed off the nickname claim since, no matter what the harvest totals say.

5. Savannah or Charleston

Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina, have argued for generations over which city plays the charming Southern port town better.

This particular fight has no scoreboard and no referee.

Charleston usually wins the food debate, with more acclaimed restaurants packed into a smaller downtown.

Savannah usually wins on price, running noticeably cheaper to live in than Charleston.

Savannah's grid of leafy squares, laid out when the city was founded in 1733, makes it an easy place to wander on foot.

Charleston pushes back hard on the walkability claim.

Its colonial settlement predates Savannah's by more than 60 years.

Savannah also allows visitors to carry a drink in a to-go cup on its downtown streets, something Charleston's stricter rules never adopted.

That alone settles a few arguments every weekend, and starts several more.

How the Border Dispute Was Resolved

Georgia and South Carolina agree the Savannah River marks their line, but the two states once argued over who owned the islands sitting inside it.

For decades, the two states argued over which side controlled those islands.

The fight reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled on the case in 1990.

Justices split the islands between the two states instead of handing them all to one side.

Georgia had leaned on an old 1787 treaty that promised it every island in the river.

South Carolina had taxed and used some of those same islands for more than 30 years, and that history is what won the case for it.

Even out in the ocean, the line runs off an imaginary point between Tybee Island in Georgia and Hilton Head Island in South Carolina.

How the Coastlines Compare

Georgia's coastline runs about 88 miles, and most of it isn't easy to reach.

Barrier islands make up most of that shoreline, and boats reach many of them, not cars.

Only about 19 miles of it have easy public access.

Two-thirds of Georgia's barrier islands sit inside parks, wildlife refuges, or preserves, trading beach traffic for undeveloped shoreline.

South Carolina took the opposite approach.

The Grand Strand alone runs about 60 continuous miles, with a road running the whole way.