Before 1860, rice, indigo, and cotton cultivated by a large slave population enriched tidewater planters. Shattered by the Civil War, which raged from 1861-65, South Carolina came to depend on textile goods and tobacco. Historic Charleston and many nearby antebellum plantations evoke the Old South. Today, retirement communities and resorts such as Myrtle Beach and Hilton Head line the fast-developing seacoast.
ECONOMYIndustry: service industries, tourism, chemicals, textiles, machinery, forest products.
Agriculture: poultry, tobacco, nursery stock, dairy products, cotton.Text source:
National Geographic Atlas of the World, Eighth Edition, 2004
