Personal Injury Attorneyin Santee, SC.

Still Here is a monthly column highlighting the wild and rural places in South Carolina

I wanted something new. The holidays and the New Year were over, Valentine’s Day was around the corner and we’d reached a point in the marriage where another evening of the flowers and chocolate or even a nice dinner out seemed bland.

I wanted something sweeter.

And that’s when I started doing some research and learned about Santee State Park. Although not as well-known as the most frequently visited Hunting Island State Park on the coast or the spectacular mountain pinnacle setting of Table Rock State Park, Santee sits along the edge of Lake Marion, the largest lake in South Carolina.

Santee features over 150 campsites and RV hookups, as well as 30 cabins — 10 located on a pier over the lake and 20 along the lakeshore. It was the idea of staying in a cabin — which also allowed us to bring our dog, Lenny Bruce, along — that beckoned to me.

It was a surprise. She was expecting an outing since I’d asked her to take the day off work, but she wasn’t expecting to be out in the woods, close to the water, surrounded by tall cypress trees, Spanish moss and dwarf palmettos — and great Wi-Fi so she could still work remotely for the rest of the week.

One of the best parts of traveling in South Carolina is driving the back roads. Whether approaching Santee from Columbia or Charleston, each a little more than an hour from the park, the route necessitates leaving the highways and meandering along at a slower pace, paying closer attention to the road.

And each other.

This is the appeal of nature at its core: not knowing what will be around the bend.

While at the same time, feeling deeply protected and watched by the presence and beauty of something larger and beyond our understanding.

Like love. Like marriage.

The cabin was beautiful — spacious and comfortable with a full kitchen and stunning views of the lake and the moon rising at night.

It made me realize how important it is to leave home from time to time. When we’re home, we’re constantly thinking about tasks we must do, or memories that come through — and in a place that is spare and clean, with just a few personal items and a wide view, our minds can rest and open in a good way.

Like Congaree, Santee is named for the original inhabitants of the land. Connected to the Siouan-speaking tribes of the Great Plains, the Santee people settled along the banks of the Santee River and had a population of 3,000 at European contact in 1600.

In 1800, the nation’s first summit canal was built, connecting the Santee and Cooper Rivers so goods could be carried between Columbia and Charleston. The canal was used until the 1950s when railroads became the easier, cheaper way of transport, and was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

The landscape shifted again in 1934 when, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, $31 million in federal funds (five times South Carolina’s state budget at the time) created the Santee Cooper Hydroelectric and Navigation Project. The damming and diversion of the Santee and Cooper Rivers created Lake Marion and Lake Moultrie, under which the remains of the mill town of Ferguson, abandoned in 1915, still lie.

Ironically, since the dams create electric power, the lack of city lights across the area allows the moon to glow even more brightly when reflected on the lake’s waters at night.

This feeling of the nearness of nature affects us, I think, in ways that are a healing balance to the domination of the artificial and constructed in the human world.

How every sunrise is an absolute miracle.

How everything is a combination of the beauty of light and shadow.

And how shadow can mean “companion,” as in “my shadow.”

We reflected on this while walking with our dog along the more than 10 miles of hiking trails in the park. (He actually ran most of the time, so full of joy at the soft paths and new smells and sensations.)

We need this joy, we realized, as humans, too.

We hiked, and we rested, we read, she played guitar and sang, we watched the sun set and the moon rise and the sun rise again over the water.

It felt like a new beginning. It felt like nature and magic and music and laughter. It felt like falling in love again.

It felt sweet.

It felt like love that is still here.

Last Christmas, fire destroyed one of Santee’s most popular restaurants, Lone Star Bar-B-Que. Now, they are returning with a new look.

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SANTEE, S.C. — On Christmas day last year, Santee's Lone Star Bar-B-Que and Mercantile burned to the ground.

This week, owner Rachael Henderson says they are reopening, but with a new style.

“Originally our plan was to build a building, but with the economy the way that it is and the prices have gone up so much on everything, just to do a small building was a lot," Henderson said. "So me and my husband were talking, let's get a food trailer and see how that works. And if it works out well, we can build as we work. So whatever we make, we can put back into the building fund to build another building.”

RELATED: Owners of Lone Star BBQ optimistic about return after hundreds gather for fundraiser

The current Lone Star Bar-B-Que food truck is parked next to their original location.

Jane Powell from the Santee Cooper Country Visitor’s Center says the restaurant was a big pull for tourism in Orangeburg County.

“It’s great for tourism, it just has such a great reputation and people do come here and they ask us all the time, 'Where can we go eat, we want to eat like locals,'" Powell said. "That's important when you're visiting this area, and I mean, we all do that. So Lone Star is one of our “you must go to” when you’re in the Santee Cooper Country area.”

RELATED: Orangeburg county BBQ celebrates milestone

Lone Star Bar-B-Que's owners are asking guests to be patient as they navigate their new space.

“Please have some patience with us, this is new for us, too. So, we're having to figure out how we can capitalize on the most food in a little place and still make sure that we can serve the customers efficiently because we don’t have as much room," Henderson said. "We went from 7200 sq. feet to a food trailer, but we’re trying to do the best that we can. We love the barbecue business. We love our community. We want to be there, so were doing what we can to start with.”

Lone Star Bar-B-Que's food truck will officially reopen on at 11 a.m. on Friday, November 1, 2024.

Next Santee Cooper Fall Qualifier is Nov 9 at John C Land!

BassKings Solo Series is coming to Santee Cooper in 2025! Win BIG!

Tap on the link to view schedule and info!

Bennett Lawshe brought in 5 bass weighing 16.91 lbs good enough for the win at Santee Cooper!

Billy Willis & Glenn Porter 2nd with 14.38 lbs!

Gunner & Don Pendarvis 3rd with 12.68 lbs!

James Gibbons with the BF at 6.15 lbs!

Team Coign battles through wind with swimjigs on Lake Brownwood to catch 28 bass weighing 51-7 and earn Patriot Cup title

EARLY, Texas (Oct. 29, 2024) – It was a blustery day on the water for the four teams competing on Lake Brownwood, Tuesday, in the Championship Round of the Folds of Honor Patriot Cup presented by recteq. The Team Coign duo of Jeff Sprague of Wills Point, Texas, and Bryan Thrift of Shelby, North Carolina, battled through the tough conditions to win the event, catching 28 bass weighing 51 pounds, 7 ounces. For their victory, Sprague and Thrift earned $40,000 and the Patriot Cup championship.

The event, hosted by Visit Early, was the third event of the season for the General Tire Team Series presented by Bass Pro Shops.

It was a close match for most of the afternoon between Team Coign and Team Builders FirstSource, represented by pros Ott DeFoe and Alton Jones Jr. Late in the third period Team Builders FirstSource had cut the deficit down to just 4 pounds, 11 ounces, then Sprague and Thrift went on a mini flurry, catching three scorable bass in the final 20 minutes to pull away and secure the victory.

Link to HD Video Clip of Patriot Cup Championship Round HighlightsLink to Photo Gallery of Patriot Cup Championship Round Highlights

“It was a good day, man,” Thrift said in his postgame interview. “We made good decisions all the way throughout the day. When we were here on Sunday for the Knockout Round, we got into a little bit of a midday lull. But today we got into the back of some pockets and fought through that midday lull.

“We caught some key fish in those pockets on a ChatterBait and a Texas rig,” Thrift continued. “And in the back of our minds, we knew that we could come back to this spot that we ended the day on and catch two or three to close this thing out if we needed to. We did, and it worked out, perfectly.”

Thrift caught eight keepers on the day – four on a swimjig and four on a swimming worm. Sprague caught 20 keepers – 11 on a swimjig, two on a vibrating jig and two on a Texas-rigged creature bait.

“The bait that carried us 99% of the way was just a hand-tied swimjig,” Sprague said. “We threw it with the brand-new Lake Fork Lure Co. Pro Craw, in bluegill and honey-craw color. The bait looks just like a bluegill, and that is what did all of the work for us this week.”

Thrift and Sprague came into the event with a bit of a chip on their shoulder. The duo teamed up earlier this season at the Heritage Cup in Wisconsin and had a disappointing tournament, not advancing out of the Elimination Round. This week in Texas, Sprague felt like their experience fishing together gave them an advantage.

“We learned so much from each other at the last event,” Sprague said before the event. “Even though we’d fished together a lot as friends, we’d never competed together on the same boat. I felt like we’d work together better, and fish faster and more efficiently at this one.”

Sprague’s prediction rang true, as the duo overcame equipment frustrations earlier in the week and worked well together, complementing each other’s styles and fishing fast, as both anglers are known to do.

“Today was a pretty stinking perfect, day,” Sprague went on to say. “I’m so excited that we got it done, together. If you look at the roster of guys that we fished against today… We competed against the best anglers on the planet this week. It is so difficult to win one of these things. I’m so happy that I got it done this week with my buddy Thrift, and I’m going to remember this one for a long time.”

The top four teams at the Folds of Honor Patriot Cup Presented by recteq finished:

1st: Team Coign, 28 bass, 51-7 Jeff Sprague, Wills Point, Texas, 20 bass, 37-7 Bryan Thrift, Shelby, N.C., eight bass, 14-02nd: Team Builders FirstSource, 21 bass, 43-6 Ott DeFoe, Blaine, Tenn., 10 bass, 20-5 Alton Jones Jr., Waco, Texas, 11 bass, 23-13rd: Team Lucas Oil, 14 bass, 26-0 Dustin Connell, Clanton, Ala., 10 bass, 19-12 Jacob Wheeler, Harrison, Ark., four bass, 6-44th: Team 7 Brew Coffee, seven bass, 10-6 Brent Ehrler, Redlands, Calif., six bass, 9-2 Justin Lucas, Guntersville, Ala., one bass, 1-4

Complete results from throughout the week can be found at MajorLeagueFishing.com.

Overall, there were 70 bass weighing 131 pounds, 3 ounces caught by the four teams competing in the Championship Round on Lake Brownwood. Connell caught the Berkley Big Bass of the day on a frog – a chunky largemouth weighing 4 pounds, 12 ounces.

The Folds of Honor Patriot Cup Presented by recteq was hosted by Visit Early and took place over six days in west-central Texas. The competition water for each day was top-secret and only revealed to the anglers when they arrived at the boat ramp each morning.

The Patriot Cup featured 12 two-man teams, divided into three groups as they entered the one-day Elimination Round matches. Each of the three Elimination Round matches featured four new teams, with the top two teams from each match of the Elimination Round advancing to the Knockout Round on Days 4 & 5. In the Knockout Rounds, three teams competed each day, with the top two teams from each Knockout Round match moving on to the Championship Round on Day 6. In Tuesday’s Day 6 Championship Round, the final four teams competed in a one-day shootout to determine which team was the winner of the 2024 Folds of Honor Patriot Cup Presented by recteq.

The 2024 General Tire Team Series is comprised of four events – Challenge Cup, Heritage Cup, Patriot Cup and Summit Cup – featuring two-man teams of MLF Bass Pro Tour pros competing from the same boat. Each event features a roster of 24 anglers, teamed up and working together to claim part of a season purse of more than $720,000. Teams were formed through a selection process, where 48 team captains – based on Fishing Clash Angler of the Year (AOY) standings throughout the 2024 Bass Pro Tour season – selected a teammate. Teams will compete throughout the fall of 2024.

The fourth and final General Tire Team Series event of the season – the Summit Cup – will take place Nov. 17-22. The location for the event will be announced to anglers thirty days prior to the start of the event.

Television coverage of the Folds of Honor Patriot Cup Presented by recteq will premiere on Outdoor Channel as six two-hour episodes in March 2025. New MLF General Tire Team Series episodes will premiere each Saturday morning on Outdoor Channel and posted to MOTV.

Proud sponsors of the MLF General Tire Team Series include: 7 Brew Coffee, Abu Garcia, B&W Trailer Hitches, Barbasol, Bass Boat Technologies, Bass Pro Shops, Berkley, BUBBA, Builders FirstSource, C-MAP, Coign, Epic Baits, Ferguson, Fishing Clash, General Tire, Knighten Industries, Kubota, Lowrance, Lucas Oil, Mercury, Mossy Oak, Nitro Boats, Onyx, Plano, Power-Pole, Ranger Boats, Rapala Baits, REDCON1, Smokey Mountain Herbal Snuff, Star brite, Toyota, USAA, WIX Filters and YETI.

For complete details and updated information on Major League Fishing and the General Tire Team Series Presented by Bass Pro Shops, visit MajorLeagueFishing.com. For regular updates, photos, tournament news and more, follow MLF’s social media outlets at Facebook, X, Instagram and YouTube.

The most immediate concern facing the Santee Delta in recent years has been a plan to extend a high-voltage transmission line through the Francis Marion National Forest and across one of South Carolina's most scenic vistas, but a broader worry is whether we will learn the secrets of this vast — and vastly important — series of rice plantations before they gradually disappear under the waters of increasingly higher tides.

A new team of historians, archaeologists and anthropologists has banded together to launch a 5-year-long project to document what remains of this landscape and share what lessons it holds about one of our state's major economic sites during the colonial and antebellum eras.

Botanist, author and cultural historian Richard Porcher began creating the group after The Post and Courier published an in-depth feature on the delta's historical, economic and environmental significance in September 2019. Other key members include archaeologists Kendy Altizer and Martha Zierden, cultural historian Herb Frazier and Hayden Smith, a College of Charleston professor who wrote Carolina's Golden Fields about the Lowcountry's inland rice fields.

Centuries ago, the Santee Delta was a cypress swamp flooded by the tide twice a day. European colonists and enslaved people from Africa then transformed it into about 15,000 acres of impounded fields that they could flood with freshwater and then drain as needed to grow rice. In the decades after the Civil War, these fields began their slow evolution from a well-populated city-state that produced a great quantity of wealth to a quieter, almost anonymous place where former impoundments were maintained to support ducks and other birds, if that, and much of the land — whether publicly or privately owned — was maintained in a largely natural, conserved state.

Far fewer people had any reason to brave the often-thick clouds of mosquitoes there, and the cabins for enslaved workers, rice warehouses, mills and other physical remnants slowly faded from sight . So despite the size and significance of our footprints on the delta, we know relatively little about where people there got their food, where they buried their dead or how they worshipped. The project aims to start unlocking those secrets, create a National Register Historic District to help protect and promote it and ultimately tell its story through a comprehensive new history.

It's unclear how much survives, but there is one encouraging sign. Archaeologists recently did shovel tests at a small slave settlement between the North and South Santee rivers and found colonoware, cypress shake shingles, leather scraps, peach pits and other food waste. As Ms. Altizer told reporter Tony Bartelme, "It was a defining moment where we realized, OK, there are things here and it’s important to keep going.”

This important work merits support, possibly with a financial contribution to help finance the roughly $800,000 it is expected to cost or by reaching out with any questions about what is going on. The University of North Georgia, the American College of the Building Arts, Clemson University and the College of Charleston should be commended for their support. Other key backers include the Village Museum in McClellanville, Heritage Trust, the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources and The Post and Courier Foundation, this newspaper's charitable arm.

Those most closely involved in the project believe it will yield many "aha" moments that will shed light on the delta's rich yet complicated history, and they also stress there is urgency to the work, as low-lying sites where archaeologists can stand and work today could become impossible to dig due to our warming climate and rising seas.

Future generations will be grateful to those who stepped up now and made sure this unique opportunity to learn about one of South Carolina's most important places was not passed up.

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