Congaree National Park launches another growth spurt with tract purchase

Congaree National Park soon will grow by 625 acres as the natural oasis slowly fills in its planned future boundaries.

The newest addition is part of the Silverstone tract, the one large privately owned link remaining in a 30-mile wildlife corridor along the east bank of the Congaree River.

The 625 acres to be added to the park is only about a third of the Silverstone tract. However, the $2 million purchase gives park advocates confidence the National Park Service eventually will own the whole thing.

“We’re happy,” said John Grego, president of Friends of Congaree Swamp. “It shows we’re making progress. We’re just anxious to see things moving forward.”

The Trust for Public Land closed on the purchase of the 625 acres last week. The nonprofit conservation organization plans to sell the property to the Park Service when it has federal money available. The land has been used by a hunt club for years.

Buying the rest of the 1,840-acre Silverstone tract would:

• Provide easy access to the park from U.S. 601. About 140,000 visitors a year enter the park off lightly traveled Old Bluff Road in southeastern Richland County. A major U.S. 601 entrance could be years away, however, because state officials are debating how to improve the nearby bridge over the Congaree River.

• Provide more recreational opportunities. The Silverstone tract includes the rest of a spectacular four-mile oxbow lake ideal for paddling and fishing. The dirt road system maintained by the hunt club invites bike traffic, which isn’t allowed in the current portion of the park.

• Complete the protected wildlife corridor from the northern edge of the national park through Lake Marion. The park would adjoin Upper Santee Swamp, which includes 18,000 acres managed as a natural area by state-owned Santee Cooper. Manchester State Forest, just upstream on the Wateree River, expands the protected area by about 25,000 acres.

The park covered about 22,000 acres in 2003 when Congress approved changing its status to a national park from a national monument. As part of the change in designation, Congress gave the National Park Service permission to negotiate to buy an additional 4,600 acres, including the Silverstone tract. But since then, federal money to buy land has been cut and negotiations with private landowners have bogged down.

The plodding process prompted the National Parks Conservation Association on Tuesday to highlight Congaree in a report called “America’s Heritage: For Sale.” The national advocacy group listed Congaree among 56 parks in danger of losing land within their boundaries to developers.

Advocates for Congaree aren’t overly concerned.

“It takes a long time,” Grego said. “When they approved the boundary expansion, they provided $6 million (for land acquisition). We knew at the time that was enough only for one tract.”

Most of the original acquisition money — $5.5 million — was spent on the Bates Fork tract, 2,400 acres at the point where the Congaree and Wateree rivers meet.

By the time the National Parks Conservation Association report came out Tuesday, the Trust For Public Land had reached agreement with Silverstone’s owners to buy the 625 acres. The owner, a real estate investment firm, long has expressed willingness to sell the entire tract, and the Trust for Public Land plans to continue to negotiate for the rest of the land.

The state’s congressional delegation — with U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., at the point — has worked to funnel more money to the park. About $5.5 million is needed to complete the Silverstone tract purchase.

Buying the 625 acres is important because if the owners had grown impatient and subdivided the tract, “the odds against us creating that connectivity increase tremendously,” said Chris Deming, project manager for Trust for Public Land.

The 625 acres borders the main landmass of the park in southeastern Richland County. It doesn’t include road frontage or the riverfront portion of the Silverstone tract, and it doesn’t connect all the way to the Bates Fork tract.

“It won’t mean a lot to visitors in the immediate sense,” said park superintendent Tracy Swartout. But the full Silverstone tract “is important because it will connect the eastern and western portions of the park.”

While much of the Silverstone tract has been timbered, pockets of huge cypress trees stand within a short hike from the dirt access road. One tree near the road measures 27 feet 3 inches around at chest height.

Park officials hope giving visitors an easy-to-reach taste of what makes the park special will entice more visitors to make the long hike to the heart of the largest remaining old-growth bottomland forest in the country.

Reach Holleman at (803) 771-8366.