Hampton Plantation is a quiet and serene state historic site, but in the 18th and 19th centuries it was a working rice plantation bustling with activity. Cannons boom. Muskets bark. Interpretive rangers in 17th century dress tend heirloom crops. They're all part of the "new" Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site. Here a group of English settlers landed in 1670 and established what would become the birthplace of the Carolinas colony, the plantation system of the American South, and one of the continent's first major port cities. And here the story is still told. Opened in 1970 as Charles Towne Landing State Park, the peaceful park on a marshy point off the Ashley River was rebuilt in 2006 with a sharpened focus on the site's remarkable past.
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