Swamp Fun at Cypress Gardens...

Wanting a true Lowcountry experience, our daughter-in-law planned the most perfect day for us.

The 170-acre Cypress Gardens is nestled on the former Dean Hall Plantation. Its history dates back to the 1725, when Alexander Nesbitt was given 3,100 acres on the east side of the Cooper River. When he arrived from England to the Carolinas, he began to build on this property and named the plantation Dean Hall after his homeland of Dean, Scotland.

Dean Hall arose as one of the most notable settlements in South Carolina and was touted as a model community that supported hundreds of employed and enslaved workers. The innovated agricultural methods of that era employed the pitch of tide to fill large water impoundments where one could open the gates to allow rushing waters to turn wheels that milled the rice on the grist stones. The innovative invention cleaned the husks off of innumerable rice kernels.

William Augustus Carson purchased Dean Hall in 1821, and he and his sons held it for 88 years. During his tenure, Dean Hall produced more rice than anytime during its long legacy and it steadily improved until few places rivaled its ambiance. Carson greatly expanded the water reserves, installed sluice gates

to better manage the predictable pitch of tides, and strategically harnessed the ebbs and flows of the Cooper River to grow impressive crops. With his considerable profits, he built the second Dean Hall house in the style of an English manor. Plantation owners on the salty Cooper and Back Rivers depended upon fresh water to irrigate the rice plants and drown the nuisance weeds. They impounded water by damming the swamps and releasing timely floods onto potential fields. The demise of slavery after the Civil War, the Unionist strict attitudes toward the planting “nobility,” and years of forced political and social reconstruction steadily erased the profits from river side agriculture. Thus the end of a long rice growing era.

And how did it become this amazing park? Benjamin Kittredge, who bought the property in 1909 for a private duck hunting reserve, developed the walking trails and opened it to the public after he and his wife became enchanted by the natural beauty. The property was later donated to the City of Charleston in 1963 and then transferred to Berkeley County in 1996. What a gift!

This was the most highly anticipated aspect of our day here. "Experience the wild beauty of the swamp on a scenic boat ride through Cypress Gardens. Our exciting swamp boat rides offer a unique view of our vast garden landscape. Revel in the reflections of towering bald cypress and tupelo trees mirrored in the blackwater. Paddle along a marked trail and keep an eye out for alligators, turtles, birds, lily pads, and other swamp life."

Our goal was to see an alligator in the wild. We were not disappointed!

After our boat ride, we strolled the scenic trails imaging how life would have been 300 years ago. Wild stuff, indeed.

A true delight was being surrounded by hundreds of fluttering and gracious butterflies. The Cypress Gardens Butterfly House is the largest butterfly breeding facility in the state.

Our explore ended at the very coolly named Swaparium. Here we journeyed through the wetlands of the world with extraordinary animals like the South American anaconda and African crocodiles, all showcased in immersive, naturalistic habitats. So awesome.