Cultural Models, Landscapes, and Large Dams: an Ethnographic And

CULTURAL MODELS, LANDSCAPES, AND LARGE DAMS: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC AND

ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF THE SANTEE COOPER PROJECT, 1938-1942

ELIZABETH MARIE HARVEY LOVERN

(Under the Direction of J. Peter Brosius)

ABSTRACT

This work systematically explores the discourse of the human and environmental impact of the Santee Cooper hydroelectric system developed in the South Carolina coastal plain. This federal New Deal government project occurred during 1938-1942 and inundated over 160,000 acres of wetlands and climax forest, displacing many long-time residents, their homes, farms, and communities, with dammed lakes and hydroelectric facilities. A major question addressed by this research is, “How do people perceive large-scale environmental change?” In a text analysis of primary documents, I analyze the discourse strategies the promoters of the development and those protesting it employed to support their assertions about the Santee basin landscape. I then introduce a broader cultural model framework in the form of an oral history ethnography to show how citizens in Berkeley County remember and currently interpret the changes wrought on the local landscape and in their lives. Shared by each of the cultural models through analysis are the themes of progress and destruction attributed to the development of the project.

INDEX WORDS: Cultural Models, Landscape Anthropology, Environmental History, Memory, Political Ecology, South Carolina Coastal Plain

CULTURAL MODELS, LANDSCAPES, AND LARGE DAMS: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC AND

ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF THE SANTEE COOPER PROJECT, 1938-1942

ELIZABETH MARIE HARVEY LOVERN

B.S., Georgetown University, 1996

A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial

Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

ATHENS, GEORGIA

2007

Elizabeth Marie Harvey Lovern

CULTURAL MODELS, LANDSCAPES, AND LARGE DAMS: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC AND

ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF THE SANTEE COOPER PROJECT, 1938-1942

ELIZABETH MARIE HARVEY LOVERN

Major Professor: J. Peter Brosius

Committee: Ervan Garrison Paul Sutter

Electronic Version Approved:

Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2007

DEDICATION This dissertation is lovingly dedicated to my parents, Troy and Sallie Harvey v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation was funded by a National Science Foundation Cultural Anthropology

Dissertation Research Award. The support and encouragement of many people enabled me to

complete this dissertation. I would first like to thank Dr. Pete Brosius for accepting me as a

student in the middle of my graduate school career and allowing me to follow my interests and

goals. He also gave me sound guidance and constructive suggestions at many stages. I admire

him for his passion to the discipline and for ensuring that anthropology can make a difference in

worldwide conservation efforts.

I would also like to thank the distinguished members of my Doctoral Committee: Dr.

Ervan Garrison from the Department of Anthropology and Dr. Paul Sutter from the Department

of History at the University of Georgia. Their feedback was instrumental in making my

dissertation more relevant to the disciplines of anthropology and environmental history. I am

also grateful to Dr. Benjamin Blount, who helped to shape my research and interests early in my

graduate school career.

There is another special person from our Anthropology Department who deserves much

of my appreciation. Margie Floyd, our graduate student secretary, gave me compassion and

cheer that heartened me as well as helped me with many steps throughout this process.

Next I would like to thank those who supported me while I was conducting my research.

The participants with whom I engaged in oral history ethnography were so kind, encouraging,

and interested in my project. They deserve much of the credit for making the history of Santee

Cooper come to life for me. Marietta and Todd Hicks are wonderful for providing me with a

great place to stay, and I will never forget their enthusiasm about my project and the helpful

leads I received from them. One of the highlights of my field research was sharing and vi

discussing the day’s findings with Marietta. I also thank the employees of Santee Cooper I spoke to who were so open and willing to provide me with information, photocopies, pictures, and their time, even on days when I was asking for a lot!

Since much of the dissertation also involves the use of archival sources, I want to thank

the archivists and librarians who helped me with their extensive knowledge of collections as well

as their generosity. The staff at the South Caroliniana Library, the South Carolina Historical

Society, Suzanne Krebsbach at Santee Cooper Library, and the staff of the Santee Cooper

Archives were most instrumental in my quest for the best materials. I was lucky to receive

transcription and editing help from Megan Hall, whose skillful and thorough corrections

improved the dissertation immeasurably.

The foundation that has allowed me to achieve my academic goals came from my

family’s emotional support. They gave me so much time and help these many years. First of all,

I owe a lifetime of gratitude to my parents, Sallie and Troy Harvey, for their unconditional love

and belief that I could accomplish whatever I set my mind to achieve. They gave me the essential passion for education and instilled in me confidence to follow my dreams. I would not have finished my academic program without the pillars of generosity, grace, and strength that are my in-laws, Aileen and Wayne Lovern. The wholehearted encouragement of Bonnie Harvey,

Valerie Alexander, and David Alexander was great because they were always within a phone’s reach to share both burdens and laughter. I also want to thank Emily and Ed Chadwick and

Hazel King for their love and support.

Finally, I would like to express my love and appreciation for the joy and devotion given

to me by my irrepressibly cheerful son Charlie and my steadfast and patient husband Daniel.

Words are not enough to express how much they both mean to me. vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... v

LIST OF FIGURES ...... xi

PREFACE...... xiii

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Overview ...... 1

Theoretical Background ...... 3

Cognitive Anthropology and Cultural Models...... 4

Cultural Models and Memory ...... 8

Cultural Models and Landscape...... 11

Environmental History and Landscape ...... 17

Political Ecology and Dams ...... 21

Methods...... 24

Analysis...... 28

Limitations...... 30

Organization of the Dissertation ...... 32

2 BACKGROUND OF THE SANTEE COOPER BASIN ...... 34

Physical Features...... 34

History and Ecology in the Basin Landscape...... 36

Historical Beginnings of Santee Cooper ...... 54

3 PROMOTING A LANDSCAPE OF PROGRESS...... 69 viii

The Architects of Change ...... 72

A Schema of Progress ...... 76

Industry, Opportunity, and Prosperity ...... 80

Electricity, Employment, and Transportation ...... 88

Natural Resources ...... 95

Outside or Inside the Main Model: Two Political Schemas...... 100

Summary ...... 110

4 DECRYING THE DESTRUCTION OF A LANDSCAPE...... 113

The Protestors of Change ...... 113

Destruction and Loss of Homes and Land ...... 117

Doubt over the Project...... 128

Anti-Government Reactions...... 133

The Land-Buying Process ...... 140

Loss of Wildlife...... 144

Fighting with Words: the Two Sides of the Debate ...... 148

Summary ...... 153

5 A LANDSCAPE OF THE PAST: BERKELEY COUNTY IN THE 1930S...... 156

Historical Ethnography...... 156

Life in the 1930s, Berkeley County...... 165

The African American Population ...... 174

Moncks Corner: Cattle, Liquor, and Politics...... 177

Berkeley County Health Issues ...... 183

A Fondness for the Past...... 187 ix

The Landscape before Santee Cooper ...... 190

Summary ...... 203

6 A LANDSCAPE OF GROWTH: SANTEE COOPER CONSTRUCTION ...... 205

Growth and Activity in Moncks Corner...... 206

Exciting Features of the Project ...... 213

The Impact of Electricity...... 224

Battling the Mosquito Menace ...... 228

Summary ...... 232

7 A CONDEMNED LANDSCAPE: RESETTLEMENT AND FLOODING ...... 234

Condemned to Move ...... 237

Leaving the Basin ...... 246

The Removal of African American Families from the Basin ...... 248

The Impact of Clearing and Flooding the Basin ...... 255

Reflections on Loss and Progress...... 259

Summary ...... 266

8 A REPURPOSED LANDSCAPE: THE LONG-TERM IMPACTS OF SANTEE

COOPER ...... 268

Environmental Effects of Santee Cooper ...... 269

Recreation on the Lakes ...... 278

The Impact of Hugo ...... 284

Santee Cooper’s Impact on Berkeley County ...... 287

A Shifting View of Progress ...... 296

Summary ...... 301 x

9 CONCLUSION...... 303

FIGURES, IMAGES, AND MAPS...... 315

REFERENCES ...... 339

Primary Texts Used for Historical Analysis ...... 339

Primary Sources...... 345

Academic and Secondary Sources...... 353

LIST OF FIGURES

Page

Figure 1.1: Proposed Santee Cooper Project Map...... 315

Figure 2.1: Geological Cross-Section of Santee Basin...... 316

Figure 2.2: Cook’s Map ...... 317

Figure 2.3: USDA Aerial Photo of Black Oak Section ...... 318

Figure 2.4: USDA Aerial Photo of Pinopolis Dam Site ...... 319

Figure 2.5: Map of Interpolated 1942 Vegetation Tolerance Classes ...... 320

Figure 2.6: Mouzon’s Map ...... 321

Figure 2.7: NOAA Satellite Map...... 322

Figure 3.1: Santee Cooper Drawing...... 323

Figure 5.1: Farmhouse Photograph...... 324

Figure 5.2: Kerosene Lanterns Photograph ...... 324

Figure 5.3: Moncks Corner near Railroad Tracks ...... 325

Figure 5.4: Moncks Corner in the 1930s ...... 325

Figure 5.5: Gaillard’s Map...... 326

Figure 5.6: Black Oak Church ...... 327

Figure 5.7: Somerset Home ...... 327

Figure 5.8: Eutaw Plantation...... 328

Figure 5.9: Hanover House...... 328

Figure 6.1: Photo of Tree Being Cut...... 329

Figure 6.2: Photo of Cleared Land...... 329

Figure 6.3: Santee Cooper Viewing Stand...... 330 xii

Figure 6.4: Photo of the Big Dig...... 330

Figure 6.5: Constructing the Hydroplant at the Pinopolis Dam Site ...... 331

Figure 6.6: Giant Turbines...... 331

Figure 6.7: Rural Electrification ...... 332

Figure 6.8: Mosquito Eradication ...... 332

Figure 7.1: Waiting to Move...... 333

Figure 7.2: Moving Day...... 333

Figure 7.3: Tearing Down...... 334

Figure 7.4: A Lone Chimney ...... 334

Figure 7.5: Remains Placed in New Boxes...... 335

Figure 7.6: Removing Graves...... 335

Figure 8.1: Map of Classified Vegetation in Santee River Delta, 1999/2000 ...... 336

Figure 8.2: Map of Santee River Delta Showing Vegetation Change ...... 337

Figure 8.3: Happy Fishermen ...... 338

Figure 8.4: Santee Dam and Spillway...... 338 xiii

PREFACE

When I think about the ethnographic portion of my study, many images flash through my

mind, vivid impressions of living and working in Berkeley County, South Carolina. My personal

reflections include memories of the area’s rural nature and its residents’ affability. The small

town of Moncks Corner and its rural environs also include stark spaces where traditional ways of life meet contemporary transitions and development.

One such site where convention meets change is the long stretch of road called Highway

16, connecting Interstate 26 (I-26) with the town of Moncks Corner. Even though this road is

more dangerous than the wider and busier Highway 17-A just a few miles away, I preferred this

more rural route with its incongruous indicators of progress. Turning onto Highway 16 heading

east, visitors are first confronted with massive log trucks, bulldozers, and several hundred feet of dirty tracks left on the paved road from the trucks. The small volunteer fire department lies nearby. Acres of cleared land smolder with piles of burning brush. In these vacant fields, out- of-town contractors are making way for new housing developments, tracts onto which vinyl- sided homes with ample square footage will sit tightly next to one another in sandy, treeless neighborhoods. These developments will soon serve as bedroom communities for the nearby bustling, growing metropolitan areas of Charleston and North Charleston.

Past the four-way stop at Cooper Store Crossroads, the narrow road ahead is flat but

curving. Zones of pine trees and a few modest houses frame alternating green and golden fields

of planted land. Down a particular stretch of eight or nine houses in a row, owners have

positioned American flags out near the road, just beside the mailboxes. These three-by-five-foot

flags, on narrow poles about six feet from the ground, wave from each yard and line a striking,

parade-like path to a small town where patriotism is strong. xiv

Such were the memories of my extended stay in Berkeley County, South Carolina, meaningful to me because my father was born there. As a child I visited occasionally, enjoying the company of my aunts, uncles, and cousins who lived there on farms near Cooper Store

Crossroads. To them, I was a city girl; to me, they “talked funny.” My family and I enjoyed

Lake Moultrie, where as a child I swam, fished, and learned to water-ski. At that time, I did not realize the lake was artificial, nor did I ever consider how it was formed or how long it had been there. I remember being both scared of snakes and curious about the many stumps that my father maneuvered his boat to avoid, but that was the extent of my knowledge of the lake and what lay beneath.

Since commencing my graduate studies in environmental anthropology I have been interested in how people perceive large-scale landscape changes where they live. How do they react to these transformations, and how do the changes affect their lives? How do the consequences of landscape change differentially affect people of different social and economic backgrounds? I completed exploratory research on this question in two island environments:

Antigua in the West Indies and Daufuskie Island in South Carolina. When both attempts led to investigative dead ends, I began to examine landscapes that had been transformed on a larger scale on the Southeastern coastal plain.

The site of the largest government earth-clearing project in American history, Santee

Cooper, was the very region close to where my father and his family once lived. To create this massive hydroelectric federal New Deal project, workers cleared and inundated 170,000 acres of land to provide jobs, expand electricity, and develop the region economically. Because the project had occurred almost seventy years ago, I knew I could compare contemporary documentation of the project’s development with the present-day views of those who xv

remembered it. Mine was a potentially productive research agenda, since many people tout the history of the region and acknowledge the importance of Santee Cooper. A first task at my field site was to find those who remembered Santee Cooper’s creation and the former landscape it transformed.

My relationships with the participants varied. Many of them welcomed me because they

knew my late grandfather who, as I learned, had been a respected man in the community.

Several participants told me that he helped out neighboring families during the throes of the

depression. It was a fascinating and humbling experience to learn details about my extended

family that I had never known before, and I developed a greater appreciation for my family’s

history and their perseverance through difficult economic times. A few of the participants

became what anthropologists refer to as “key informants,” helping me fill research gaps by either

enabling me to understand chains of events or by uncovering more people for me to interview.

These key informants were crucial to my research because I could contact them to make sense of

what others had said about particular places or events.

Once a participant and I settled into the interview, I enjoyed the conversation. Simply stated, the participants were kind and patient, welcoming me into their homes and offering family scrapbooks, photographs, printed genealogies, and personal letters. I also received sweet tea, homemade cane syrup, and recipes, as well as invitations to church services and to a country

music hootenanny. Many times interviewees called other locals for me to meet and possibly

interview. I usually left with invitations to return and stay in touch.

Other impressions too remain prominent in my mind, images of my elderly interviewees.

As I was invited into their homes, I was able to observe how many area retirees live: oftentimes family portraits hung on the walls and prescription medications were carefully lined up along the xvi kitchen counters. Picture albums were frequently tucked away but within reach, to be easily pulled out and proudly leafed through. They shared their lives’ memories of joy and sorrow with me.

Even though my links from the past facilitated my present research agenda in Berkeley

County, I was able to accumulate data as only an outside investigator could. This role afforded me considerable freedom from worrying about whether or not I would step on any personal opinions or partisan toes and enabled me to probe people’s memories without preconceived ideas of their social standing in the small community.

The following dissertation could not have been accomplished without the willingness of these participants to speak candidly about their life histories and their experiences with their local environment. Their recollections and stories account for the liveliness and vividness of the

Santee Cooper history.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Overview

How do people respond to massive, human-driven environmental change where they

live? By comparing an analysis of historical texts with oral history ethnography, I systematically explore the discourse surrounding the human and environmental impact of the Santee Cooper1 hydroelectric system developed in the South Carolina coastal plain. Said to be the largest single earth-clearing project in U. S. history (Edgar 1984), this federal New Deal government project lasted from 1938 to 1942 and inundated over 170,000 acres of land, displacing many long-time residents, their homes, farms, and communities; damming lakes; and creating hydroelectric facilities. During this period, the promoters of the development employed a particular discourse strategy to try to gain support from the local communities, many of which had views of their inhabited landscape that differed from those of the developers; these differences frequently led to protest and resentment. An overarching theme of this research is how the process of modernization, driven by political and economic goals, transforms people’s cognitive and cultural relationships with the landscape.

The theoretical background of this dissertation is established in cognitive anthropological theory. As an outgrowth of cognitive anthropology, cultural models relate knowledge and beliefs in a framework of cognitive categories and schemas. Methodologically, cultural models rely on in-depth studies of rich, detailed text from which shared patterns are formed and tested.

Large-scale transformations to a local landscape can result in patterned responses and shared

1 The name “Santee Cooper” refers to several things – the South Carolina Public Service Authority, the hydroelectric project created by the Authority with the assistance of the PWA and the WPA, the current publicly- owned utility corporation, and the lakes created by damming the Santee River and diverting it into the Cooper River. Originally called Santee-Cooper, the organization dropped the hyphen in the 1960s and is now referred to as Santee Cooper. Only when I am directly quoting a printed source from the early period do I utilize the hyphen in the name. 2

interpretations, and through this project I seek to discover what these cultural models are and

how they might be related to each other. Particularly, to what extent do promoters of large-scale

environmental change and the people that change directly affects similarly perceive the transformation? Through ethnography and an examination of the historical record, I pose this question to both the past and the present. The contemporary ethnography in this study also serves as a basis for validating and comparing historical accounts with local knowledge and memory.

Because of the massive impact of its environmental transformation, my research focuses

on the Santee Cooper hydroelectric system in the lower coastal plain of South Carolina, a federal

WPA project that was approved in 1934 (Figure 1.1). The Santee Cooper basin is an ideal case

study for perceptions of large-scale landscape change for several reasons. First, the project was

one of the single largest earth-moving efforts in the United States ever, as workers cleared over

170,000 acres of land for inundation (Edgar 1984), causing thousands of people to leave their

homes and land. Second, it is a perfect example of a major historical development that

stimulated enormous economic and social change in the region, owing to the New Deal program

of President Franklin Roosevelt and several prominent South Carolina politicians. For decades,

promoters of the project had wanted to provide electricity to and spur development in the economically depressed rural South, and the project’s effect was to transform this section of the

South Carolina coastal plain from a very rural society to a modernized economy, electrifying the

countryside and shaping the future growth of the coastal cities of Myrtle Beach and Charleston.

Next, a study of the basin is useful because extensive documentary evidence of its development

exists in the form of primary documents, photographs, maps, and plans. Finally, there is an

extant population to corroborate and complement the findings with their rich memories and

different viewpoints and to relate their current perspectives, personal histories, and identities to the modern landscape.

The project’s social and environmental impacts demonstrate how dam-associated power

relations differently affected the various population segments. The official history of the Santee

Cooper hydroelectric system is one of massive mobilization for economic improvement and jobs,

although this official account ignores the situations of the ordinary people who were most

affected by the development. The resettlement of more than 900 families, most of whom were of

African American descent, caused social and health consequences. Churches, schools, and

cemeteries containing over 6,000 graves were also moved. Almost no secondary historical

literature describes these people’s experiences or views of being resettled, although many of

them resent having been uprooted from their ancestral lands. The Santee Cooper officials also

pursued control of malaria and mosquitoes as a major goal of the project and were able to lower

the rates of disease among the area’s residents. Environmentally, the hydroelectric project

transformed productive wetlands into recreational lakes and altered the natural flow of the Santee

and Cooper rivers; both changes disrupted the biological and physical balance of the ecosystem.

Theoretical Background

Several current theoretical perspectives in anthropology – cognitive anthropology,

memory, and landscape – inform this dissertation and provide the framework for the discussion

of the themes present in the data. Through applying methods of cultural models in this

dissertation, I describe and analyze how people perceived landscape change in the Santee Cooper

basin area and how they remember it. In describing the landscape change as it occurred, I also

incorporate a modest amount of environmental history to illuminate several processes of

environmental change and human activity in an era of great social change. Aided by these concepts, I examine the past and the present views of the Santee basin landscape by analyzing the past debates, memories, and reflections of those who were affected by the creation of the massive hydroelectric project. I evaluate original documents from the era and oral history interviews as separate domains of analysis, which I then compare to show how the view of the project changed over time.

Cognitive Anthropology and Cultural Models

Cognitive anthropology is the specialized branch of cultural anthropology that studies

how cultural knowledge is shared, learned, processed, organized, and retrieved in the mind.

Goodenough’s contribution was to define culture as what one has to know and believe to act in a

manner acceptable to others in society (1957). Cognitive anthropologists generally view culture

as a pool of shared and learned information that includes “programs for action and understanding” (D’Andrade 1981:179). Borrowing concepts and ideas from cognitive science,

cognitive anthropologists seek to explain how knowledge is stored in the mind. Language, a

major component of culture, is produced, stored, and retrieved in the mind. The complexity of

the mind’s capacity for language comes from development of the human brain (Aitchinson

1994).

Some basic terminology is essential for any cultural study that takes a cognitive

perspective, for it helps us to understand the configuration of the mind. These terms help us to

engage with the notion of the human cognitive system as a “structure-seeking device”

(D’Andrade 1995: 120) by which humans categorize things together into groups of related items

called domains (Rosch 1976, Lakoff 1987, Hirschfield and Gelman 1994). Several important

concepts to understand categorization, domains, and processing in cognitive systems are schema and metaphor.

Schemas (or schemata) are knowledge structures in the mind that are thought to be the

“building blocks of cognition” and serve as holistic and indexical representations (“gestalt”) of

objects, orientations, and events (Casson 1983). They have their basis in the theory of human

memory as proposed by Bartlett (1935). Schemas are abstract mechanisms that serve to process

information by instantiating (binding) “particular elements to particular variables on particular

occasions” (Casson 1983: 431), providing a “general impression of the whole” instead of

detailed elements (Casson 1983: 430). Frames, which are lexical and grammatical forms and

rules, activate schemas in the process of retrieval (Casson 1983: 433). Schemas are embedded

within one another in hierarchical structures in which higher levels include general, abstract

concepts that tend to be fixed. The embedded sub-schemas underneath that serve to support the

higher schemas represent specific variables that tend to be observable in the environment. These

characteristics of schemas form the basis for identifying cultural models from text.

Cultural meaning is often constructed through and with metaphor, as humans frequently

understand and experience one thing in terms of another (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Metaphor

is a way of connecting two seemingly unrelated domains of cognition. Jean Aitchinson (1994)

wrote that the mental lexicon itself is a metaphor for how we understand the human brain’s

capacity to organize, store and retrieve words. Expressions of metaphor occur in feelings of

anger (Lakoff and Kovecses 1987) and talk about American marriage (Quinn and Holland 1987).

In cultural models, metaphor serves to illuminate patterns and themes in the discourse. Humans

perceive the world in structured ways (Rosch et al. 1976, Berlin 1973, Atran 1990), but their

interpretation of the environment is culturally defined (Ingold 1992).

Today, cognitive research has gone beyond studying categorization, classification prototypes and schemas to focus on how to interrelate these types of cultural knowledge with models (Quinn and Holland 1987, D’Andrade 1995). Cultural models are a means of understanding human action, reasoning, and decision-making (Quinn and Holland 1987,

D’Andrade 1995, Garro 2000) and for reconstructing culturally learned ways of perceiving and evaluating (Dailey 1999). Claudia Strauss and Naomi Quinn proposed a theory of cultural meaning that focuses on shared, recurring, common experiences that are “mediated by humanly created products and learned practices that lead them to develop schemas” (Strauss and Quinn

1997:7). Cultural models, which are distributed socially, figure prominently into a new, ethnographic theory of mind that “suggests an outside-in view of thinking” (Shore 1996:75).

These models, which integrate the public and the subjective, become transformed into mental representations through the process of analogical schematization and are “subject to continual negotiation” (Shore 1996:371).

Cultural consensus analysis, an outgrowth of methods in ethnoscience, measures how much cultural knowledge (usually within a single domain) is known and how widely it is shared within a group (Romney et al. 1986). While consensus analysis is designed to elicit a “pool” or

“storehouse” of knowledge, cultural models offer a way to arrange elements of perception and behavior together in meaningful ways that are better able to account for variation among individuals (Garro 2000).

Cultural models demonstrate cultural knowledge classification and arrangement by allowing a researcher to integrate a variety of methods. Employing such a strategy allows us to understand the complex relationships between various levels of cultural knowledge organization, such as categories and schemas. Cognitive anthropologists seek to discover how these systems

7 of knowledge are related, embedded, and organized in complex yet patterned ways (Lakoff 1987;

Holland and Quinn 1987; D'Andrade 1995). The mind organizes systems of meaning into fundamental themes that are nested within hierarchical patterns (Quinn and Holland 1987). One very successful cultural model approach used by anthropologists was the discovery of shared patterns of environmental values in American society (Kempton et al. 1995).

The methods for eliciting cultural models are explicit yet open to innovation and development. The first steps of the methodology involve choosing a domain of study that is culturally salient in some way to the population being studied. Then, rich and detailed ethnographic text is elicited from willing participants, often through in-depth, semi-structured interviews. The resulting interviews are coded and analyzed qualitatively. Cognitive anthropologists often employ text analysis and keyword analysis to search for patterns that

“appear central to the structure of the discourse” (Blount 2002: 16) and are indexical for domains of information. They code key words and phrases and analyze them for their configurations and interrelations. This analysis may yield structured patterns that show similarities and differences in understandings of cultural phenomena. The similarities need not be in the agreement of opinions expressed but in the underlying comprehension of “how things are” (Kempton et al.

1995).

The methodology of cultural models can be expanded and applied to historical and environmental questions by using primary historical documents as texts for analysis. In his pioneering study of Appalachian forests, Mark Dailey constructed cultural models from primary historical sources to explain how humans perceived and acted upon the environment around them (1999) and was the first to use historical documents as texts for analysis. He found that humans interpret environmental change as part of a larger cultural model, one that has embedded

8 in it upper-level schemas of cultural ideals (such as “progress”) and lower-level schemas of knowledge of the local landscape (Dailey 1999).

In this dissertation, cultural models form the basis for discussion and comparison of the major themes present in the discourse of both text documents and ethnographic interviews. I explore the use of cultural models in two major ways: first, I explain how cultural models are influenced by memory and by the negotiation process of collective social memory and of the politics of memory. In the second approach, I describe how cultural models are useful for the understanding of landscape change through the cognition of scale, features, and meaning.

Cultural Models and Memory

Cultural models, through their foundation in cognitive anthropology and schema theory as previously described, relate to studies of memory. Memory is both personal and social, individual and collective. Memory was originally considered to be a cognitive capacity of individuals’ brains (as in knowledge retention), but we now recognize that memory is also socially constructed.

French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs introduced the social construction of memory when he stated that human memory functions within a collective context (1992). People shape recollections of events in a selective process that is influenced by one’s family, religion, or class affiliations. Briefly stated, people confer meaning upon past events by reconstructing them through shared discourse (Halbwachs 1992). Social memory is distinctive from more official historical reconstruction of facts and is carried out through bodily practices and social habits that legitimize a society’s memories (Connerton 1989). In other words, a memory from the past persists into the present when “it remains relevant for later cultural formations” (Olick and

Robbins 1998:129). In this tradition, memory is social and collective. The shaping of collective

memory determines what people remember versus what they forget as they reproduce and

reconstruct episodes from the past in a process that has political, cultural, and social

consequences (Nora 1996, Ricoeur 2006).

The study of memory has its basis in the inquiry of human cognition. Bartlett first

proposed that humans remember past events in gestalt-like wholes instead of recalling past

specific details (1935). Basically, people reconstruct the past by activating schemas that help them to recreate events they are trying to remember (Bartlett 1935). More recent research

suggests that remembering the past can clarify relationships among cognitive processes,

knowledge, and culture (Garro 2000: 276). With this view, we consider shared cultural models

as a “form of collective memory, serving as resources that are variably used by individuals in

reconstructing and making sense of the past” (Garro 2000: 312). Linda Garro’s cultural models

of illness exhibit shared cultural patterns, elicited from the participants’ memories, with degrees

of variation linked to social and personal experiences (Garro 2000). The new theories of mind

proposed by Shore (1996) and Strauss and Quinn (1997) allow a search for cultural meaning that

is negotiated, emerges from patterns, and is based in lived experience. These newer approaches

of anthropologists provide more comprehensive and negotiated systems of meaning in culture

instead of treating memories as fixed and homogeneous.

Phenomenologists who study memory attempt to capture the way humans perceive past

events within their own minds (Casey 1987), including how personal emotions factor into

people’s memories of the past and their interpretations of the meaning of their surroundings.

People experience events from unique viewpoints and with various interpretations which, when

incorporated into memory, create personal reflections and opinions on past events. These

diverse perspectives create multiple viewpoints, some of which are potentially conflicting or

contradictory.

The politics of memory is a genre of anthropological inquiry that attaches importance to

the contested meaning of past events, especially periods of great social and political upheaval.

Rappaport’s account of the Paez of Colombia (1990) demonstrates a group’s struggle to maintain its ethnic history amid the official historicizing of their people. Invoking Hobsbawm and

Rangers’ “invention of tradition” perspective (1983), she explains how the Paez negotiate a reinvention of their past through the changing uses of symbols, oral history, and myth. Another approach is the study of how those in power define and use cultural memory to enact atrocities on certain groups of people, such as in Nazi Germany (H. Hirsch 1995). This approach figures prominently in studies of people’s treatment under repressive governmental regimes (De Brito et al. 2001), since dominant hegemonic cultures threaten to suppress the memories of subaltern people in many societies. Smith studies the discourse of group memories and argues that the multi-vocal, composite aspect of memory is found among people of all social positions, not just the subaltern groups (Andrea Smith 2004).

For the purposes of this dissertation, the politics of memory genre is a fruitful application

of the negotiated aspect of memory that confers meaning to how people view the Santee Cooper

project today. This mode of inquiry allows for a dynamic interpretation of cultural models that

incorporates individual variability as well as the collective aspects of memory that are shared

socially. By applying the politics of memory perspective, I am able to determine that certain

agents, including politicians, organization directors, businesspeople and others who have vested

interests in maintaining a good image of the hydroelectric development sought to influence the

public view of it. People who experienced specific past events have ways of individually

11 realizing and socially sharing their memories. The memories of the past demonstrate that certain privileged viewpoints have influence over other viewpoints in the way the “official,” dominant, or the most commonly-held stories are told. These memories, as oft-recounted stories of events, shift over time as people perceive and evaluate the benefits versus the disadvantages of the social and environmental changes that created them.

Cultural Models and Landscape

The anthropology of landscape is an emerging sub-field of anthropology that is based on the concept of landscape as a nexus of human-environmental interaction. This dissertation is informed by recent developments in the anthropology of landscape. Cultural models relate to landscape in this dissertation since they convey the embedded representations of cultural ideals at the higher levels and sensory experience with the environment at the lower levels. Extracting from my data, I explain how humans engage in the cognition and understanding of landscapes through the three primary means of meaning, scale, and features.

Landscape was first deliberately turned into a realm of anthropological study with the publication of the book The Anthropology of Landscape, edited by E. Hirsch and O’Hanlon

(1995). The idea of landscape is essentially Western in both of its definitions: as an aesthetic and artistic view of the world on one hand (the origins of the word refer to landscape scenery in paintings) and an integration of scientifically-verifiable natural and human phenomena on a particular segment of the earth on the other (Cosgrove 1998). The idea of landscape as one of cultural process, as stated by E. Hirsch (1995), is the most widely employed definition in cultural anthropology (Stewart and Strathern 2003). In anthropology, the concept of landscape refers to a site inhabited, altered, and made meaningful by people (Ingold 1993, E. Hirsch 1995).

Anthropologists can “read the landscape” to examine how humans perceive, use, and affect the landscape. The notion of landscape, similar to other broadly employed anthropological concepts, encompasses both materialist and idealist domains, examining both political economic issues and cultural values while initiating new opportunities for inquiry (Stewart and Strathern 2003).

A primary way in which humans view their surrounding landscapes is through meaning, which develops in the landscape as a result of human interaction with the environment. Meaning in this sense refers to cultural significance. “Place” as a concept refers to a location of human activity and meaning that includes the symbolic and the emotional (Tuan 1990), where both individual and shared group experiences contribute to creating “places” of human value

(Brandenburg and Carroll 1995). Simply stated, place is space made meaningful (Feld and

Basso 1996). Attachment in emotional terms to these places creates a “sense of place” that is important for ecosystem management strategies (Eisenhauer et al. 2000) and for maintaining cultural identity (Shamai 1991).

Another leading view of landscape significance states that a landscape is a “symbolic environment” created when humans confer “meaning to nature and the environment, of giving the environment definition and form from a particular angle of vision and through a special filter of values and beliefs” (Greider and Garkovich 1994: 1). Humans understand and mediate this interaction with the environment through their idealist tendencies (Descola 1994). As the

“perceived settings that frame people’s sense of place and community,” landscapes have emotional and historical values embedded within them (Stewart and Strathern 2003:4). For example, landscape is a symbolic resource of cultural significance where “oral narratives had the power to establish bonds between individuals and the landscape” (Basso 1984: 23). Another instance is how anthropologists show how people invoke landscape in the discourse of identity,

such as in the case of how people talk about the scenery of the English countryside (Frake 1996).

Landscapes develop cultural meaning by becoming sites of individual experience and social interaction.

Landscapes are also locations of conflicting values and uses, affecting their cultural significance. They are sites of contestation in which power struggles, environmental degradation and economic development occur (Feld and Basso 1996). White settlers in the early United

States viewed land as a commodity based on monetary market values under a system of democratic capitalism, a view that differed from the Native American conception of the land

(Jorgensen 1984). For Margaret Rodman, studies of place should take into account all multiplicities of human voices so that culture is not solely bound to privilege those in positions of power (1992). This also requires that we “recognize that space is socially constructed, and contested, in practice” (Rodman 1992: 647). Loss of place through natural disasters or human- led development is linked to loss of community as well as to mental and emotional distress

(Erickson 1976, Read 1996, N. Smith 1996).

The scale of a landscape is a second of three major ways in which people cognize the

landscape. My focus on scale borrows from established works in historical ecology which study

the impact of culture on a landscape in combination with ecological processes, emphasizing both

spatial and temporal scales. For Carole Crumley, scales chosen for analysis allow one to

comprehend patterns in the landscape (1994:9). These perceived patterns frequently match the

ecological definition of landscape scale. According to landscape ecologists Richard Forman and

Michel Godron, a landscape is a contiguous but “heterogeneous land area composed of interacting ecosystems” (1986: 11). In other words, landscapes are made up of several different ecological communities over an area measured in square kilometers (Forman and Godron 1986).

Scale, whether temporal or spatial, relative or absolute, is a very important variable that must be

made explicit in any analysis, because scale can determine whether an area appears

heterogeneous or homogeneous (Meentemeyer and Box 1987).

Scale is also important because humans cognize the environment at a landscape

dimension. The effects of human activity, however, on the landscape occur at different levels

that vary with time, space, and culture (Crumley 1994:10). This issue of scale compares to that

of human cognition of the extent of a landscape, which would be the way in which humans best

perceive of the size, boundaries, and dimensions of a land area. People express their understanding of the landscape’s scale when they talk about how a territory is covered, such as

by a forest, or describe the dimensions, area, or estimated distance of the landscape. Inhabitants

demonstrate such understanding when they talk about how an area is ecologically composed (e.g.

forests). However, these landscapes are not always personally recalled in precise measurement

of distances. Additionally, the parameters of an ecologically-defined landscape might not always

correspond to a human awareness of the boundaries or scale of a particular landscape.

The features of the landscape are a third key primary component of how humans view the

environment and provide a basis for understanding how humans perceive landscape change.

Landscape features are observable (or other sensory) elements that are either natural or anthropogenic. These features of a landscape include the range of geological attributes to flora and fauna to human artifacts.

Features of a landscape interact in particular ways in the study of ecology. For

ecologists, landscapes are characterized by their structure, function, and change, and are

composed of a matrix (or background), patches, and corridors. The primary basis for the

heterogeneity in the landscape is thermodynamic due to solar energy, but this does not exclude

the impact humans have on disturbance regimes in ecosystems. Monica Turner emphasizes that

the spatial patterns of heterogeneity influence ecological process, as they can influence the

spread of disturbance in the landscape (1989). The vegetation, wildlife, and physical aspects of

the landscape are all included in the features as well as the way they interact to create various

ecotones. People not familiar with ecological principles can note these aspects of a landscape.

The features of a landscape also include landmarks and human activity that people can

call up and remember. For some anthropologists, landscape also contains a heavily cognitive

component, both in terms of language and in terms of spatial knowledge. Landscapes are located

in the mind as spatial representations with particular salient features, both ecological and anthropogenic. Language and discourse are keys to understanding cognition of particular landscapes. Levinson argues that one should study the “language of spatial description” and how people refer to places to understand the ways people think about landscapes (Levinson 1996:

355). I follow this methodology by studying the discourse of local residents in their description

of features in the local landscape and their changes.

Cognitive mapping is the elicitation of spatial perception and knowledge, both in terms of

scale and features. Mental maps are representations of the geographical aspects and location

within a person’s mind that helps him to make sense of his surroundings (Nazarea 1995: 103).

People’s cognitive maps of areas tend to indicate distinct geographical features (Ritchie 1977),

but also sites of human activity and place-names (Feld 1996, Basso 1984). These are important

features to human cognition of landscape.

Landscape relates to the human mind in additional ways. The idea of “scape” itself is a

“projection of human consciousness” (Brandenburg and Carroll 1995:384). Stephen Feld

explains that the experience and understanding of a landscape can be accomplished through

learning the sounds and music of the forest, where songs of place-names are “indexical” of the

landscape – here, place is an “integrative site for memories” of sound and sight (Feld 1996: 84).

Humans organize the great complexity of landscape “into prototypical units on the basis of their

beliefs about the world” (Gragson 1998: 215). Landscape is also a metaphor for mental models

of human relation to space (Shore 1996). In this dissertation, I employ a cognitive explanation of

landscape to understand how humans interpret tremendous changes to their surroundings. It

shows how people perceive their inhabited landscape and their place within it, the site of

personal experience and memories.

By employing these primary cognitive aspects of scale, features, and meaning, I interpret

the Santee Cooper landscape through a study of the participants’ experiential knowledge and especially their memories. Human memories locate themselves on landscapes through sensory experience mediated by cultural ideals. Memory also attaches itself to place in many forms through oral traditions and human activity (Feld and Basso 1996). Stewart and Strathern claim that memories of place and landscapes work together to establish a new notion of community that integrates broad factors of social and cultural change (2003). Memories of landscapes carry

on in the form of place names (Basso 1996, Angele Smith 2003), stories, and other personal and

shared anecdotes. In this sense, memories relate to specific features of the landscape, and they

are instrumental in creating meaning of past and present landscapes. The process of the politics of memory, as discussed in the previous section, also creates and mediates the meaning of particular landscapes for people.

To combine a study of cultural models with landscape is to highlight the close connection

between landscape and cognition. My data show that people cognize a landscape based on three

major aspects: scale, features, and meaning. In this dissertation, I will demonstrate the cultural

values pertaining to landscapes that account for the upper-level schemas of cultural meaning in

the cultural model. At the same time, people’s experiential knowledge of the landscape will

serve as the lower-level schemas that form the base for the cultural model of the Santee basin

landscape described. These cognitive understandings and recollections of features and scale of

the landscape help to establish these lower-level schemas of the landscape.

Environmental History and Landscape

Several works in environmental history inform this dissertation, particularly those that

employ the concept of landscape. Environmental historians seek to fit the environment into the

narrative of the past and to draw “attention to obscured or buried relationships” (Steinberg 2002:

820). In such instances, landscape is the site of historical narrative, as the historian uncovers the

series of events that occur in an environment, with special attention to human-ecological

interactions (Cronon 1983, Worster 1979). Many wetlands and watersheds are historically contested landscapes (Vileisis 1997), and issues of water and dams figure prominently in the history of disputes over certain landscapes and resources (Worster 1992, Pisani 1996, Reisner

1993, White 1995). Richard White explains how the natural system of the Columbia River connects to human labor and technology to create the energy of an “organic machine” (1995).

Donald Worster argues in Rivers of Empire (1992) that governmental reach and economic drive for expansion led to large irrigation schemes that profoundly and irrevocably altered forces of nature, especially those of water resources, in the American West. This historical event is similar to the federal and state government involvement in an ecologically and historically significant watershed that was permanently changed to meet the economic goals of Santee

Cooper.

To illustrate how other environmental historians have expanded the idea of landscape, I

refer to two recent works in Southern environmental history in unique ways. Both of these

works use primary documents to uncover people’s past perceptions of landscapes. In his book

“What Nature Suffers to Groe:” Life, Labor, and Landscape on the Georgia Coast, 1680-1920,

Mart Stewart elucidates the difference between “political landscape,” which implies the exercise

of formal political power and authority on the land versus “vernacular landscape” which is

informal, experience-based knowledge and inhabitation of the land (Stewart 1996). In coastal

Georgia, for example, African American slaves made use of this vernacular landscape of the

wetlands as a way to stay “under the radar” of plantation owners and managers, and found food

and recreation within (Stewart 1996). The distinction between the political and vernacular

landscape is useful for my research because the promotion of the hydroelectric project matched so closely the political vision of the landscape with large-scale consequences to the local people.

The political vision of Santee Cooper is in direct opposition to the everyday and ordinary experience with the landscape lived by people who had to relocate their homes, families, and

even dead ancestors’ remains.

In The Health of the Country: How American Settlers Understood Themselves and Their

Land, Conevery Bolton Valencius discusses the link between the landscape of the American

frontier in Arkansas and Missouri and cognitive understandings about health, the body, and

causes of illness (2002). Her work on the perceptions of health and disease in the American

frontier eschews the traditional narrative structure so often employed in environmental histories.

Instead, her book is organized according to the major themes most prevalent in the written record

of wilderness settlement. Similarly, my dissertation is also thematic and data-driven. Valencius’ book complements my own research because it shows thematically how landscapes are imbued

with meanings that can be read from the past and compared to contemporary perceptions and

experiences of the very same landscape.

Employing environmental history also allows for an examination of the meaning of

certain words that are central to the past and present discourse of environmental change. One

such example is the word “swamp,” which is how many of the promoters of the project viewed

the very landscape they wanted cleared and inundated. “Swamp” is an ecological term (Tufford

and McKellar 1999) meaning low-lying wet (saturated) ground where trees grow (also called a

bottomland forest) or other water-adapted vegetation (Vileisis 1997:11). The frequent flooding

of swamps and the adjacent lands inhabited by people led to a nationwide effort in the mid-

nineteenth century, driven by an agrarian bias, to drain them for settlement and farming (Vileisis

1997: 73-76). The word “swamp” is also culture-laden because it generally categorizes the territory as a both wasteland (unsuited for cultivation) and disease-ridden, malarial area (Vileisis

1997, Valencius 2002). Today, however, people consider these same regions to be ecologically productive wetlands. Defining land as a swamp also precludes the possibility that people created these areas into homesteads, even though that is just what many African American families had done from the time of the plantation agriculture (Stewart 1996) into the twentieth century.

Although the term “swamp” is frequently problematic owing to its colloquial usages and cultural

connotations, the interviewees and botanists regularly employ this term to describe the basin

landscape.

One method of environmental history underutilized by historians is that of oral history to

elucidate patterns and meaning from reminiscences of the past by older generations. As the oral

history tradition reached its heyday in the 1970s, many of these oral historians focused on

folklore and events of social upheaval, but oral history can be just as useful in the study of

environmental change. Oral history helps achieve historiographic goals by transforming the social meanings and later significance of historic events. Such employment of oral history

“democratizes” the traditional archival analysis by more closely examining how everyday people experienced social change (Thompson 1978[2000]), giving a qualitative richness to the data.

Cultural models have only been used once before to provide historiographic perspectives for past events (Dailey 1999), and written accounts of Santee Cooper to date have not incorporated systematic ethnographic interpretations of the project’s impacts. This ethnographic perspective speaks to the fact that ordinary people, living through a period of massive environmental and social change, recollect and evaluate momentous changes in their personal lives and shared cultural landscapes. The social history I present shows how ordinary people, living through a period of massive environmental and social change, recollect and evaluate such a momentous alteration to their own personal lives and shared cultural landscapes. Environmental history benefits anthropology by offering a more comprehensive temporal analysis that illustrates the causative elements of human action and interaction with the environment over time.

The anthropological application of historical ecology adds another contribution to the

environmental history of this dissertation. Historical ecology studies past regional ecosystems

but acknowledges the influence of past human activity on the landscape, which we can read as

“historical process” (Crumley 1994, Balee 1998a). These human-altered landscapes create

implications for biodiversity (Balee 1998a: 8) and for ecological processes such as succession

(Turner 1989, Christensen 1989). Scholars acknowledge that land use generally depends on the

type of ecosystem change, while these ecological processes are directly influenced by patterns of

land use (Christensen 1989). Within historical ecology, the relationship between nature and

culture is a dialogue (Ingerson 1994, Balee 1998b) and results in landscapes that are “culturally

and historically determined physical environments” (Balee 1998b: 16). Historical ecology

should incorporate individual praxis and expand anthropological notions of history (Whitehead

1998). The methods include the study of written records and ecological traces with sedimentary records to reconstruct past landscapes of ecological change and human activity (Russell 1997).

In this dissertation, I make use of these methods by compiling original documents, maps, photographs, and interviews to depict a landscape from the past and explain it in terms of historical and cultural trends. I also describe the impacts of Santee Cooper from an ecological

perspective.

Political Ecology and Dams

Political ecology studies in anthropology also contribute to this dissertation. Political

ecologists seek to build an integrated knowledge of how political and environmental forces

interact to influence social and environmental change. They examine access to land and natural

resources and define the parties and interests that control them (Gezon 1999). Management of

these resources, such as soil and water, can demonstrate social relations among various actors

(Hershkovitz 1994). Scholars explore issues of ecological and political marginality, such as

power relations within degraded environments (Blaikie and Brookfield 1987). Development

schemes that bring alterations to these environments create both consequences and altered

landscapes where people must adjust to new, sometimes unfavorable, conditions. To advance

their particular agendas, government and environmental institutions practice discursive strategies

that privilege the rights and concerns of certain groups over others (Brosius 1999).

Other anthropologists relate landscapes to the methods and goals of political ecology.

Politics and power embed themselves in landscapes, as those who are “differentially engaged and

differentially empowered” seek to appropriate and contest certain landscapes over others (Bender

1993: 17). In one particular case in Guinea, scientists and policy-makers misinterpreted the

creation of forest islands by local groups as deforestation and degradation, which drove the

government to take away control of local resources from the indigenous residents (Fairhead and

Leach 1996: 3). Maps are representations of landscapes that negotiate multiple meanings and

goals both politically and socially (Harley 1989, Angele Smith 2003). Mapping is a powerful

way in which different groups collect and demonstrate cultural knowledge and claims to

resources as well as assert power and struggle over claims to space (Peluso 1991, Orlove 1992,

Rocheleau 1995). Landscapes are also the site of contestation over environmental issues

stemming from traditional versus modern uses and exploitation of land (Strang 1997).

Attempts to procure and harness fresh water characterize a major aspect of human-

environmental relations and their social and political consequences. The issue of large dams is

of interest to political ecology because of the immense scale of this kind of appropriation of land and water resources. Often, these dams are built to provide hydroelectricity and irrigation to spur and support economic development in rural areas. Dams have a major effect on societies and landscapes. The ecological consequences of large dams include loss of anadromous fishes

and other species, sedimentation, unintended flooding, salinization, and evaporation (McCully

2001). Bad economics (in which benefits are overstated and costs are underestimated), faulty engineering, and operational mistakes have led to many social and health problems. These flawed economic studies lead to a loss of land and resources for local populations and result in forced resettlements, lack of adequate compensation and housing, and overall reduction of food

supplies (McDonald and Muldowny 1982, Goldsmith and Hildyard 1984). Dams also bring

changes in agrarian relations (Reddy 1991) because of loss of agricultural land, forests, and

wildlife.

Social consequences of large dam projects include forced dislocation and resettlement.

Sometimes these events spark resistance movements such as that of the Amazonian Indians in both cooperation and conflict with environmentalists against the state of Brazil (Cummings

1990, Ribeiro 1994). In the United States, environmental and social justice movements were created to express resistance over the large Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, especially after the expectation of employment opportunities fell flat (Stine 2001). In the past, there has been little resistance to large dams in the Southeastern United States (McDonald and Muldowny 1982), but this is rapidly changing as people are mobilizing against further dam construction (Stine 2001,

McCully 2001). The environmental and social impacts of large dams figure into cultural models of landscape change to varying degrees, according to the perceived severity of consequences.

Since the Santee Cooper development occurred in the United States during the New Deal

era, federal, state, and local politics and economic development strategies play prominent roles in

determining the use and transformation of environmental resources. I engaged in a systematic

study of original documents from the past to understand the issues surrounding the construction

of a large hydroelectric and dam system, even before it was built. The analysis of the discourse

surrounding the development illuminates the struggles of the local people to make sense of the

environmental and social consequences of the Santee Cooper project. This research investigates

the conflicts over the use of land for competing purposes. I demonstrate how the various actors

involved with the Santee Cooper project misjudged, misrepresented, and fought over the

landscape. I also present details of the environmental effects of the large dams and reservoirs

built as a result of Santee Cooper.

Methods

I chose research questions designed to integrate the methods of cultural models with the

landscape concept. Using the questions put forth in this dissertation research, informed by the

literature, I seek to address the overall concern of how people perceive large-scale landscape

change. First of all, I wanted to know, “How did the promoters and the protesters of this large-

scale development perceive the environmental and landscape changes that would take place because of Santee Cooper?” Second, what were the principal ways in which the promoters of the

project encouraged the landscape changes to the Santee Cooper basin? As for the protesters, I

wanted to know the most salient or important parts of landscapes to people who inhabit them and

the ways in which they viewed the Santee Cooper project and its promotion. Then, I wanted to

re-create the story of people who remember the building of the Santee Cooper project and the

effect it has had on their lives. Finally, I sought to show how the written opinions over the

building of Santee Cooper from decades ago contrast with the recollections and reflections of

people who live in our contemporary society.

To answer the question of how people perceived the large-scale landscape changes due to

the clearing and construction for the Santee Cooper hydroelectric project, I made use of both archival and field research over a period of a year and a half. During the first phase of the research, I spent eleven months visiting over a dozen archives and libraries in South Carolina,

Georgia, and Washington, D.C., to locate historical documents related to the Santee Cooper development and the Lowcountry region of South Carolina, focusing on the New Deal era. A list of archival libraries follows:

1) The South Caroliniana Library – Columbia, South Carolina

2) South Carolina State Library – Columbia, South Carolina

3) South Carolina Department of Archives and History – Columbia, South Carolina

4) Santee Cooper Library – Moncks Corner, South Carolina

5) Santee Cooper Archives – Moncks Corner, South Carolina

6) South Carolina Historical Society – Charleston, South Carolina

7) Berkeley County Library – Moncks Corner, South Carolina

8) Berkeley County Historical Society – Moncks Corner, South Carolina

9) Library of Congress – Washington, DC

10) United States National Archives – Washington, DC

11) Clemson University Cooper Library Special Collections – Clemson, South Carolina

12) College of Charleston Library – Charleston, South Carolina

13) United States National Archives – Southeast Region – Atlanta, Georgia

In the South Caroliniana Library, I systematically scoured newspapers serving the area: The

News and Courier (daily, Charleston), The Charleston Evening Post (daily), and The Berkeley

Democrat2 (weekly) for the years 1938 to 1942. In other archives and special collections at

various places, I searched for manuscripts, journals, personal papers, and letters for

documentation regarding the Santee Cooper development. The views expressed in the

documents allowed them to be separated into two main groups: one, the promoters of the Santee

Cooper project dams and lakes (that is, the state and federal government and business leaders and

developers); and two, the local citizens, including those whose families would have had to be

moved from their homes and farms in the Basin. From this larger set of data, I selected a sample

of seventy-two (72) original, personal accounts that reflected people’s views, with attempts to

represent each side (the development promoters and the local residents) equally. I chose each

2 The Berkeley Democrat is not wholly archived in any of the state libraries and archives in South Carolina. There are large gaps, from months to years, of the paper. One librarian attributes this fact to people’s simply throwing it away.

document based on how well it clearly expressed one or several viewpoints in a coherent

manner. I selected thirty-six documents from the promoters and thirty-six documents from the

protesters. I then photocopied and transcribed each document into a text document for later

analysis.

This stage of my research also yielded over ten linear feet of additional historical data.

Such documents included unpublished manuscripts, letters, records, scrapbooks, genealogies,

and personal notes. I also collected many maps and photographs. These maps and photographs

show both the ownership of the Santee basin lands and the former ecological composition of the

landscape and the location of farms, wetlands, communities, and homesteads. I obtained the

maps of land plats the government used to purchase the land before clearing. Other maps

obtained include locations of local landmarks, land cover, and land use over time. More recent

maps collected show the extent of hydroelectric development and inundation. These maps

helped to determine to what extent perceptions represented in cultural models are grounded in physical reality.

In the second phase of the research, I sought contemporary ethnographic accounts of the

past with regard to the building of the large dam. This part of the study is important not only to

judge how people view the past landscape changes and their societal impacts from a current

standpoint but to assess the extent of collective memory as well as individual experiences among

the participants discussing this event. In addition, the environmental awareness movement and

other cultural shifts of recent decades (such as the transformation of the region from a rural

agricultural society to a modern one) affect the way local people view past circumstances.

To complete the ethnographic research, I relocated to Moncks Corner, South Carolina,

for four months. There, I engaged forty-two (42) informants in and around Berkeley County,

South Carolina, in semi-structured, in-depth interviews. To find the few older persons whose families were displaced, or others who remember the dam’s construction, I used snowball sampling. With an average age of eighty, the informants included retirees of the Santee Cooper system, people who have lived in Berkeley County all their lives, and descendants or family members of those who were resettled. The participants mostly lived in the lake-area communities of Pinopolis, Moncks Corner, St. Stephen, and Bonneau Beach. Each interview lasted between two and three hours. Often the interviews would take on a life of their own, allowing me to engage the participant in many follow-up questions and discussions on contemporary issues and life in general.

First, I obtained basic demographic data about each participant, such as age, gender, how long they have lived in the area, occupation, socioeconomic status (approximated), and ethnicity.

I sought qualitatively rich views about their recollections of the dam development, the environment, and the cultural landscape from the past. I employed an oral history approach

(Hoopes 1979, Moss 1977) to trigger memories of the landscape, both before and after the dam construction. I also sought their current views of the long-term impact of the development on their contemporary lives. In my first two interviews, I sought to use a photo-elicitation technique

(Banks 2001), but as these two informants were visually impaired, I stopped using the pictures in all of the interviews. The interviews of informants were tape recorded and transcribed into a word processing program. I had to discard two informant interviews because the informants did not respond in a way that showed they understood what was being asked of them. In addition, I conducted over a dozen informational interviews with experts (including local historians, GIS and land experts, and Santee Cooper employees) to help me unite the historical details and to corroborate my findings.

Analysis

In order to find out “what people must have had in mind in order to say the things they

do” (Strauss and Quinn 1997:140), I treated each historical primary text like a regular

ethnographic interview, as did Dailey (1999). I therefore entered each of the 72 historical

documents I chose into a code-and-retrieval program (NVIVO 2.0) and coded them for themes

and keywords. I then identified keywords and key phrases, which are terms central to the discourse that serve to organize the thematic content (Blount 2002). The themes and keywords

came from the documents; I did not impose my own prior structure and keywords on them. Then

I inductively analyzed the documents by calling up the themes (termed “nodes” in NVIVO) in

the program to determine the distribution and organization of patterns.

I then used the shared themes (schemas), as structured by keywords and phrases, to

construct cognitive (cultural) models with both lower-level and upper-level schemas. From his

writing source and background research, when available, I gleaned social and demographic

features of each writer. I achieved two sets of mostly opposing cultural models by comparing

the themes voiced by the promoters of the dam on the one hand and the protesters (which were

often local or former residents) on the other.

The descriptions of the environment and landscape are keys to understanding cultural

aspects that are important to each of the groups. Therefore, they are not likely to be specific,

ecological terms, but culture-laden words and descriptions that point to broader societal events

and themes. I measured the ways in which these keywords and descriptions invoke cultural

aspects of the landscape and its changes. For each keyword or phrase that I catalogued, I

investigated if it links to broader cultural and environmental meanings. Sometimes the

explanation of the keyword appeared in the text (explicit), and other times the keyword was

indexical to the broader themes (implicit). Some terms and keywords were laden with cultural

meaning that relates a simple concept to a broader idea, such as the word “swamp,” discussed

before in the literature section.

Similarly, someone invoking place names of cultural landmarks, such as churches or

gravesites that were moved, point to personal experience and shared community concerns.

Therefore, in order to understand how such keywords will relate to the local landscape, the larger

cultural meanings to which they refer were “unpacked” (Blount 2002) and made explicit within

the context of the development and environmental changes.

For the analysis of the ethnographic data collected, I imported the transcriptions of the

interviews into NVIVO and coded the documents according to the key words and phrases. I then

inductively analyzed the texts for patterns, structure, and linkages of the themes (schemas) based

on the codes assigned to them. Then, based on the sharedness and structure of themes (schemas) among the participant texts, I formed the structured discourse into a broad, free-form cultural model, which I represent as a cultural environmental history of the Santee Cooper project. This cultural model is less structured because the interviews took many different directions and forms, allowing me to explore many different subjects with fruitful results. Also, the interviewees related so many various life experiences and different themes that the interviews became unwieldy as texts but nevertheless more interesting. For example, the interviews were coded with over 140 nodes, or themes, compared to about 35 nodes for each of the historical text analysis procedures. The cultural model based on the ethnographic interviews incorporates documented history in combination with the memories of the participants as a way of providing a more vivid and validated picture of what life was like back then. With this set of data, I had to research and consider the political and social contexts to understand how people fit their own

personal life stories into the history of the region. This cultural environmental history of the

region shows how this extant group assigns meaning, both as memory and as current views of

how they think the event shaped their lives over the long term, to the past changes in the local

landscape. Finally, I compare this ethnographic oral history model with the two cultural models

from the historical data.

Limitations

Because of the nature of working with historical data, I encountered several limitations in

my research. The first was that the records from the time period mainly reflect the opinions of middle to upper-class white persons whose opinions and statements were represented (i.e. published) or kept and housed in archives and made available to the public. The written arguments for and against Santee Cooper privilege the views of those who had access to published sources such as newspapers and who were fairly well-educated. In short, the documents were largely written by white political, economic, and/or cultural elites. There were no documents written by African Americans that I was able to find or identify. So in this way, their viewpoint is largely unrepresented, especially in light of the fact that most of the families who were relocated out of the Santee Cooper basin were of African American descent. Thus I

could not attempt to generalize the experience of African Americans in the basin based on such a

small sample of informants.

The second limitation I encountered was only being able to approximate a reaction and thus cultural model of landscape change by retrieving articles about it that were written before and during the event. This occurred in both the articles and the interviews. Once the hydroelectric project was a fait accompli, there was a dearth of viewpoints regarding the

landscape change in the primary documents. There was very little in the papers protesting the

development after it had already happened. Nor did the promoters feel the need to continue

justifying the creation of Santee Cooper after it produced electricity to aid the United States’

involvement in World War II.

A third limitation is related my use of ethnographic interviews as a way of collecting oral

history. This limitation took several forms: first, I could not obtain a perfect sample of people to

interview. For instance, the number of people who had experienced the Santee Cooper project

had declined in the past ten years or so before I began the research because the interviewees were

of advanced age. This generation I interviewed were of the age that they were young when the

project was constructed; thus, they had a certain viewpoint that their parents may not have had.

In addition, I had difficulty persuading elderly African Americans in the area to participate in the

research. I relied on the participants’ memories of how they felt (or how they remembered they felt) at the time the Santee Cooper project was occurring. So in this instance, I relied on the memories of the interviewees, the general impressions of their perceptions of landscape change, and their personal histories. One bias in particular that I encountered in my research was that of observer effects.

It is necessary to be candid about these sources of bias and limitations in any research

program and the effects they can have on the results. More limitations of the methods and the

data are discussed in the following chapters, particularly the third, in which I explain how the

issue of bias presents itself in the rhetorical strategies used by the writers. In the fifth chapter, I

discuss the limitations of the oral history and ethnographic methods and their effects on the

results of the analysis.

Organization of the Dissertation

Since I have already discussed the theoretical background and the methodology that led

to the analysis of the data, I am now able to present the results of the research. The next chapter

is a background survey of the Santee Cooper basin area. Here I give a brief environmental and

historical overview of the settlement of the area as well as a short political history of the development of Santee Cooper and some of its key facts and figures. This chapter includes a brief historical ecology of the region in which I situate people on the landscape among its ecological features.

The first part of the research results concerns the analysis of the primary historical texts

from the 1930s and 1940s that express viewpoints on the large-scale project. Chapter Three is

devoted to the promoters’ arguments for supporting the massive development that was Santee

Cooper. This section is important because the promoters’ words justified the project’s building

and provided the politicians with ammunition against the critics. Chapter Four, on the other

hand, recounts the reasons behind the vociferous opposition to the project, a protest engaged in

by the people who mostly lived in and near the basin at that time. In these two chapters, I

present the multiple meanings of the landscape as it is being contested by each side.

The second main section of the dissertation is a more holistic cultural model of landscape

change, with themes derived from my interviews with the participants who lived during that time

and remember when Santee Cooper was built. In Chapter Five, I portray Berkeley County in the

decade before the project, as local residents survived the depression, and how the landscape

appeared in the 1930s. In Chapter Six I depict the construction and clearing for the massive

project and its immediate impacts on the town and social life. Next, Chapter Seven covers the

changes to the landscape that people had emotional attachments to – the loss of their homes,

33 land, and resettlement. In Chapter Eight I recount people’s reflections upon Santee Cooper’s enduring effects, such as its long-term environmental and social impacts. The Conclusion of this dissertation compares the cultural models from the past with the present. Those who anticipated the momentous event of Santee Cooper versus those who lived through it provide an opportunity for me to evaluate how the passage of time affects people’s views of large-scale landscape change.

CHAPTER 2

BACKGROUND OF THE SANTEE-COOPER BASIN

Physical Features

What kind of landscape existed in the Santee Cooper basin? Located in the present-day area of the large Lakes Marion and Moultrie and their many surrounding towns, the Santee-

Cooper basin lies in the lower coastal plain of South Carolina (see Figure 2:1). The lower coastal plain is a mostly flat area ranging in elevation from 25 to 125 feet and features many broad, shallow valleys with meandering streams. The Santee-Cooper basin includes not only much of Berkeley County but also parts of Orangeburg, Sumter, Calhoun, and Clarendon counties. This area is part of the geographic and cultural region known as the Lowcountry, characterized by its natural beauty and its ties to the historic antebellum plantation lifestyle. The local climate features subtropical weather patterns with hot humid summers and mild winters.

Although the terrain follows a gentle slope toward the Atlantic, sinkholes, springs, and slow-moving streams make it irregular. Eocene bedrock formations distinguish, in part, the geology of the region (Figure 2.1): Cooper marl, which slightly overlaps the Santee limestone that in turn rests on top of the Black Mingo. The Black Mingo is made of soft clay shale and sands, while the Santee limestone that covers it is porous and somewhat soluble. Sinkholes and depressions were plentiful. The Cooper marl, made mostly of calcium carbonate, is tough and impermeable (Taber 1939: 3-6). The porous limestone emerges from the marl in certain areas, resulting in outcroppings and limestone springs, which were a formerly frequent sight in the

Santee basin. Covering these three Eocene layers is a Pleistocene blanket of impermeable clays and permeable sands with an average thickness of 30 feet (Taber 1939: 7). Such geological characteristics informed the debate over the feasibility of engineering the Santee-Cooper project.

The soils of the area were most fertile around the Santee River because of the silt deposition before the inundation, but the pineland areas are located on poorer, sandy soil.

At the time of the construction of Santee Cooper, the ecological characteristics of the basin reflected the legacy of over 200 years of agriculture in the South Carolina coastal plain in combination with virgin forests and wetlands. The concept of ecotone is important in explaining the overlapping sections of different ecological communities present in the Santee basin area, since this area transitions into neighboring sections of the Santee Delta, the Cooper River, and the Carolina Bays. Ecotones are the transition areas where one ecosystem blends into another.

They contain many of the species found in the adjacent ecosystems as well as specially-adapted species of plants, animals, and decomposers not found in the adjacent ecosystems (Miller

1990:80). Typically in wetland areas, ecotones are found where different sources of water meet, like where salt water mixes with fresh water from a large river or local spring. The Santee basin landscape in particular contained many unique ecological communities and their transitions in a patchwork across the region. These communities will be discussed in the following section.

The Santee is the main river of the largest watershed in the Southeastern United States. It originates in the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina and is supplied by the Saluda,

Catawba, and Broad Rivers. Prior to inundation, the Santee River had drainage area of over

15,000 square miles, most of it from within South Carolina, as it travelled its way into the flat land of the coastal plain. In 1939, the Santee River had an average flow of 19,200 cubic feet per second as it carried its waters into the Atlantic above Cape Romain (Taber 1939:1).

The Santee is categorized as a brownwater river since it receives its flow and nutrient- rich sediment from the mountainous and piedmont areas from which it originates (Porcher and

Rayner 2001:94). Because of the river, streams, and geological characteristics of the region,

much of the land was swampy: the shallow valleys formed a bowl-like basin in the broad

floodplain. Ecologically defined, swamps are lands that are flooded for much of the year. In the

Santee basin, the river and the streams created a flood-plain swamp that measured five miles

wide at the site of the proposed Wilson dam.

The following section combines the historical impacts of humans and the ecological detail of the communities, human and natural, that made their homes in the Santee basin. The basin was a patchwork-like area of swamp and forested lands interspersed with former agricultural fields in various forms of succession. The basin area contained several distinct communities such as swamp forest, shrub bog, and savanna. The blended transitions and boundaries among the communities created various ecotones that led to a preponderance of floral and faunal species. The human impact of the landscape in the form of Santee Cooper altered these ecological characteristics of the land.

History and Ecology in the Basin Landscape

The impact of the Santee Cooper project was not entirely unique in the area’s history of

land use and human settlement. Humans had engineered the land for centuries to achieve their

agricultural efforts in the production of rice and cotton. The large river, its broad drainage area,

wetlands, and plant communities created a specialized habitat for both wildlife and humans.

Writers of various perspectives and backgrounds placed their stamp on the area by describing the

basin in many ways.

The history of settlement in the Santee basin region is closely linked to the Santee River

throughout the inhabitation and transformation of the Lowcountry landscape over time. From

the inhabitation of Native American groups to the large-scale, intensive agricultural pursuits of

37 the planter society, people’s living and economic activities shaped the land. Historians and historical archaeologists have produced illuminating explanations of how people both shaped the

South Carolina Lowcountry and lived within it.

The earliest inhabitants of the region included lesser branches of the larger Native

American Siouan and Muskogean tribes. Daniel Lawson, an English explorer traveling the area in 1700, encountered the small Sewee group in the lower part of the Santee and the Santee group in the upper part of the river. The Yemasee War of 1715 decimated the population of these groups. The remaining Native Americans in the Lowcountry moved inland, died of exposure to

Old World diseases such as smallpox, or were enslaved by white European settlers (Waddell

1974). Excavations in Berkeley County at the Mattassee Lake Sites demonstrate the use of stone tools, pottery, and fire hearths dating back to the Early Archaic period. Also found at the sites were distinctive Late Woodland stamped ceramics attributed to the Santee Indians. These small, nomadic Santee and Sewee groups imprinted the prehistoric landscape of the basin with evidence of foraging practices. However, there is no evidence that they engaged in agriculture

(Commonwealth Associates 1982).

The European settlers of the proprietary colony of South Carolina obtained land grants that gave them access to the fertile lands of the Santee banks. The Huguenots were French

Protestants who left under increasing religious persecution and emigrated to the southern colonies beginning in 1680. Some stayed in Charleston and others settled along the Santee

River, intermarrying with the English by the third generation (Butler 1983). Historically, the region was divided into areas called parishes that included St. John’s (also called St. John’s

Berkeley), St. Stephen’s, and St. James. Cook’s map (Figure 2.2) shows the early parishes and plantations along the Santee River. The first settlements were close to the banks of the Santee

River, which is described as having an orange-red color (Savage 1956). The area of Upper

Berkeley heavily inhabited by the Huguenots was known as the French Santee.

The colonial settlers mainly inhabited the higher ground near the river (See Figure 2.2 for

settlement patterns showing plantations near the river). A description of the 1790 census of St.

John’s Berkeley explains that there were 195 heads of families, 209 free white males (aged

sixteen and older), 152 free white males under age sixteen, 331 free white females, and sixty

other free persons. This totals 947 free persons. At the same time, there were 5,170 slaves living

in the parish in 1790 (Cross 1985:199). In this era, St. John’s Berkeley was a very wealthy parish, although not as prosperous as the city of Charleston, some thirty miles away. St. James

Santee parish, on the other hand, comprised 123 heads of household in 1790, while St. Stephen’s parish contained 227 free persons and 2,506 slaves (Cross 1985).

Indigo was the first profitable crop in the region. In seeking the plant’s rich blue dye for

cloth, the British drove up the crop’s demand in the Old World. In 1685, Dr. Henry Woodward

introduced rice as a staple food crop (Salley 1919) that quickly became a main export of South

Carolina. After England decreased its tariffs on the formerly profitable indigo crops, the

Huguenot planters established riparian rice culture in the basin. The British brought over

enslaved West Africans to perform the labor necessary for the demands of rice growing. The

cultivation of rice made the Lowcountry planters significantly wealthy and spurred the growth of

cities such as Charleston, where wealth and fine European cultural pursuits lent the city a

prosperous and civilized reputation.

The first system of growing rice in the early eighteenth century depended on building and

maintaining earthen dams and banks to hold the water necessary for the crops. This system

made use of the inland swamps and rainwater. Periods of drought and floods, however,

frequently ruined crops, so the planters began taking advantage of their African slaves’ knowledge and adapted to a system in which tidal flows were used to irrigate the rice fields

(Carney 1993). This development occurred mostly after the Revolutionary War. Swamps, dikes, and canals were used to take advantage of the tidal waters and the fresh water from the rivers.

Banks were built to keep out the harmful salt water. Planters employed slave labor to clear inland swamps, construct dikes and flood gates along rivers, plant rice, and maintain the system of gates to flood the fields (Carney 1993, Stewart 1996). This way of cultivating rice shaped the landscape of the Lowcountry into a large, functioning, and profitable hydraulic system even though thousands of acres of inland swamps were cleared (Carney 2001). One result of this agricultural system, however, was the spread of deadly malaria, since the standing water attracted the Anopheles mosquito carrier.

People located themselves on the colonial and antebellum Santee basin landscape

according to social occupation. White persons were mainly planters or small farmers. Planter

families along the Santee sought to make their living by planting rice, but seasonal floods ruined the crops and finances of the planting families in the basin. Around 1789 some of the Huguenot descendants moved from St. James Santee to higher ground, where they were safer from seasonal floods than in the lower Santee basin. During the summer, planter families also sought refuge from the malarial lowlands on higher ground. Pinopolis was a nearby village in the basin.

Situated on a high area of land, it was almost like a peninsula jutting into the lower ground of the

basin area. The Huguenot and other planter families with plantations in the basin established

summer homes to get away from the malarial fever of the mosquito-infested swampy lowlands.

The nearby town of Moncks Corner was named as a trading center near to the Mitton plantation

of Thomas Monck who purchased the land in the 1730s. He built a commercial outpost at the

corner of two busy trade routes in the area; thus the name “Moncks Corner” was attributed to this

store.

As for African slaves who were brought to do the bulk of the work on the plantations

along the Santee River, their living quarters also reflected their social position: they generally inhabited small houses grouped together on the plantation grounds. During the eighteenth century, this enslaved population outnumbered the white population among the Santee area

parishes. The slaves lived where the planters chose to house them, mainly in concentrated areas

on the plantation over which the planters could maintain supervision and control. Slave families

in this area usually stayed together, as their owners generally recognized the kinship ties of the black families.

With a relative advantage in population, the slaves in the early eighteenth century had a

slight degree of autonomy with the task labor system after they completed their labor in the fields

(Terry 1981, Stewart 1996). In this free time, they engaged in the work of tending gardens,

hunting, and making crafts, including colonoware ceramics (Wheaton 2002). The excavations of

two colonial Huguenot Santee River plantations, Yaughan and Curriboo, yielded evidence of

post-in-trench housing construction on the plantations; this evidence demonstrates a shift in

cultural patterns from indigenous African culture to a more African American identity (Wheaton

2002).

By the late nineteenth century, after a convergence of events, rice cultivation along the banks of the Santee and Cooper rivers was no longer profitable. First, the freeing of slaves at the

Civil War’s commencement caused the plantations to lose their chief labor force. Next, the growing of cotton changed the economy and muddied the rivers. Then, the frequency and height of August floods and a couple of devastating hurricanes destroyed years of crops (Savage

1956:118). Finally, the beginning of mechanized rice agriculture elsewhere meant that growing

rice in the Lowcountry was no longer profitable. Most planters sold their lands or converted

them to other uses, like cultivating cotton. In the Santee basin, several of the large plantations

were sold to Northerners, while some were established as private wildlife hunting preserves.

Cotton, or “King Cotton,” as it was known, was the other crop that deeply stamped the

state’s landscape, resulting in “economic bondage to a single-crop agricultural system and

indifference to the ecological consequences of repeated long-term cultivation of agricultural

land” (Porcher and Rayner 2001:59). As early as 1790, South Carolina planters grew sea-island

cotton, a long-staple, black-seeded variety, because it was well-suited to coastal conditions.

Santee long cotton, first grown with success by Peter Gaillard of The Rocks plantation along the

Santee River in 1799, was a variety important to the Santee basin area. Both long-staple cottons

were desired for their long fibers which are stronger and of a high quality. In other parts of the

state, planters grew the short-staple, upland variety, characterized by its shorter fibers and greater

number of seeds. This easier-to-grow short-staple cotton was by far the most widespread crop in

the state and was associated with wasteful land-use practices. The intensive labor required of

this crop was a factor in driving up the numbers of slaves brought to work on southern

plantations, but the planting of cotton was so widespread that it also became the main livelihood

of most small farmers and tenants across the state.

After the Civil War, the South Carolina Lowcountry landscape, its land use, and its settlement patterns all changed to suit the new economic realities of loss and lack of labor. Some of the traditional planter families sold off portions of their land or converted their property to other uses. Generally, the size of farms decreased from an average of 569 acres in 1860 to 143 acres in 1880 (Kovacik and Winberry 1989). This reduction occurred as the labor system

changed from slavery to tenancy, in which the tenant did not own the land but worked on it for the landowner per the terms of an annual contract. Tenancy accounted for almost half the state’s farms by 1880 (Kovacik and Winberry 1989). During this period, however, cotton production increased and remained the biggest crop in the state, grown on forty percent of South Carolina’s agricultural land (Kovacik and Winberry 1989). The free range roaming of cattle and other livestock in remote areas also characterized Lowcountry agricultural land use. Santee basin residents in particular made use of the swamps and forests in this manner.

During the Reconstruction era in South Carolina, some African Americans who stayed in

the Santee basin were able to buy land on which to grow their crops, while others worked as

tenant farmers (through sharecropping or cash rent) for the landowner. Seventy percent of the

state’s tenant farmers were African American (Kovacik and Winberry 1989). In the post-war

economy, settlement patterns changed from what they had been on the former plantation, where

slaves were housed in groups. As the growing tenant system aided the dispersal of housing and

homesteads over the fields and along roads, the tenants formed small, scattered communities in

the fields of past plantations, living on the land they worked; these tracts of lands averaged about forty-four acres per unit in 1910 (Kovacik and Winberry 1989). Another characteristic of tenant farming was the frequent moving of families to locate a better living and working situation with a new landowner. On their plots of rented land, the families were often able to grow enough garden vegetables and tend enough livestock to feed themselves. However, they had to work hard to tend the landowner’s most economically important crop of the post-Civil War era: cotton.

Later, in the first several decades of the twentieth century, a large wave of African American

migrants, many from the Lowcountry, left for the Northern states to pursue economic

opportunities.

Well into the twentieth century, land use and local agricultural strategies were still

closely related. The rice economy never resurfaced after the Civil War, so the lands used to

grow rice were either left as they were or converted to new crops. The farmers’ insistent practice

of cultivating cotton as a cash crop statewide depleted the soil of nutrients and severely eroded

the land. Cotton was a productive crop except that sale prices were often low and markets

uncertain. The boll weevil arrived in 1911 and began to destroy the crop statewide well into the

1920s. Concurrently, the decline of cotton prices precipitated an early depression for this part of

the South, devastating the South Carolina’s economy.

By the 1930s, the statewide average farm size was only sixty-two acres. This indication

of poverty set the stage for New Deal intervention of the 1930s in the form of the Agricultural

Adjustment Administration, which set limits on the amount of cotton that could be produced but provided supplemental income and encouraged the cultivation of other crops.

Not only useful for providing water for agricultural purposes, the Santee River itself

plays an almost mythical character in the settled history of the region. In his book detailing the

storied history of the mighty Santee, Henry Savage characterizes the river as having “monstrous”

qualities owing to its wide reach, ample size, and swift flow (Savage 1956). It was known to

flood the land periodically in the spring with annual freshets, sometimes destroying crops and

livestock in its muddy path. Robert Allen of the Audubon Society called the “rampageous” river

“South Carolina’s Mississippi – big, brown, central, none too manageable” (1939:174).

The Santee was not only important as a source of water for crops but also for the

ecosystems it served in the Lowcountry, including swamps, marshes, and delta. The Santee

basin was first and foremost considered to be a “swamp” with large stands of forests. The swamp was hailed by many writers as a special place. In 1700, explorer John Lawson travelled

up the Santee River from the coast by boat with a Santee Indian guide and encountered thick

swamps as well as wild turkeys, bears, and deer. The presence of dark water was a distinct

feature of the swamps. Herbert Ravenel Sass said the “little woodland streams and the small

swamp-pools are clear-black or clear-brown like wine” (1931:7). Streams and creeks feeding the

Santee River enhanced biological diversity and provided breeding grounds for both rare and

common plants and wildlife and gave it a unique character. Just before the basin was inundated

by Santee Cooper, one of its longtime residents and Santee Cooper opponent Henry Ravenel

Dwight floridly described the Santee swamp in his WPA “Tour #2: Williamsburg County Line to

Charleston, S. C.”:

The swamp has many moods and aspects. Flooded forests of cypress, maple, and black gum yield place to open lagoons, small natural lakes or abandoned rice fields, completely reclaimed by nature and lush with water lilies and other aquatic plants. The swamp is also a place of violent contrasts, sunshine of proverbial golden brightness against shadows of deep violet. Pennons of gray moss sway above water so dark that it appears black. Color is everywhere: yellow jasmine, pink of swamp rose, and crimson of swamp maple (Dwight, N.d.(b):1).

Such a description of the swamp reveals its damp and colorful character.

The swamp was not exclusively natural and wild; it was also produced in part by the

impact of humans. Rice planters widely and intensively cultivated the Santee basin in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, building systems of dikes and ditches to maintain the water levels. Over time, many of these abandoned rice fields became climax communities as nature

took over. Each community featured its own mixture of vegetation in various stages of plant

succession, which depends on many things, including age, former activity on the land, soil

composition, and amount of flooding (Porcher and Rayner 2001:95). Richard Porcher and

Douglas Rayner explain the process of succession by which aquatic plants give way to emergent

species that interact with changing conditions to eventually create swamp forests (2001:39-41).

Such aquatic plants included the arrow-leaf lily (Nymphaea sagittaefolia), cow lily (Nymphaea

adeno), duck weed (Lemnaceae spp.), bladderwort (Utricularia), tape grass (Vallisneria

spiralis), and hornwort (Ceratophyllum). In their pond or shallow lake environment, these plants

respond differently to the soils (silt-like versus sandy) in which they are rooted as well as to the

depth of the water and the amount of sunlight (Porcher and Rayner 2001).

The Pinopolis area before inundation contained such a unique non-tidal freshwater marsh

community interspersed with shrub bogs that provided a rich growth of the following plants: cat-

tails (Typha spp.), arrowheads (Sagittaria spp.), pickerel weed (Pontederia cordata), wild rice

(Zizania aquatica), marsh millet (Zizamopsis miliacea), pond weed (Potamogeton spp.), alligator

grass (Achyranthes phyloxeroides), willow leaf (Jussicia spp.), and smart weed (Persicaria spp.).

The main shrubs found in the swamp forests included poison sumac (Rhus vernix), swamp rose

(Rosa carolina), and possum haw (Vibernums spp.) (Blizzard c.1940:7). Herbert Ravenel Sass, a local writer, described his experience canoeing in such a freshwater “lagoon”:

The water-lane leads on and on. Often the forest is so dense that for a time it seems impossible to find a passage amid the crowding tree trunks. Sometimes you come to an opening in the flooded woods – a small sunny lake walled in by the encircling cypresses. Here a bright green carpet of duckweed spreads across the water; beds of tall rushes, wampee and other aquatic growths flourish in the shallower places; lily pads and great round lotus leaves impede the boat’s passage (1931:25).

The freshwater marshes are unique because they are more consistently flooded than other areas

of the swamp.

Further developed along the continuum of ecological succession were the swamp forests.

These bottomland forests of the Santee basin contained “vast primeval stands” of virgin

hardwood and “marvelous” cypress trees (Allen 1935:443). Among the most unique trees in

46 these flooded lands were bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) with its wide base of submerged roots, and tupelo gum (or water tupelo, Nyssa aquatica). Cypress in particular had great commercial value for its long-lasting wood that was used for boats, furniture, shingles, barrels, and even caskets and beams (Porcher and Rayner 2001:288-289). Other arboreal vegetation in the basin included sweet gum (Liquidambar styranciflua), laurel oak (Q. laurifolia), water hickory (Carya aquatica), cypress (Taxodium adscendens), and white cedar (Chamaecyparis thyoides). These swamp forests provided deep shade and a site for other vegetation, including many vines, such as cross vine (Bignonia capreolata), supplejack or rattan (Berchemia scandens), and epiphytes like Spanish moss that hang from tree branches (Porcher and Rayner

2001, Blizzard c1939).

The natural occurrence of the long-leaf, loblolly, and slash pine trees (Pinus spp.) along with their being planted for valued timber led to the area’s name of “pine belt.” Savage described the pine forests as “parklike [sic] expanses of tall longleaf and loblolly pines rising from a lush expanse of grass, decorated in season” with flowers (Savage 1956:266). Botanist A.

W. Blizzard noted other trees in the Santee area, including ash (Fraxinus), willow (Salix), maple

(Acer), poplar (Populus), swamp hickory (Hicoria aquatica), and swamp gum (Nyssa biflora)

(Blizzard c.1940:7). Large stands of secondary-growth hardwood and pine, planted in formerly cultivated croplands for timber harvest, were also a feature.

These aged, tall, and immense timber stands were important to the local economy. From the colonial days, South Carolina exported hardwoods like oak to the British Empire and elsewhere. Pine trees, widespread in the Coastal Plain of South Carolina, were grown in plantation forests for wood and for pine-based products like pitch, turpentine, tar, and resin.

Trees were not always deemed valuable, however, since they had to be cleared to make way for

more profitable crops such as cotton.

The wildlife living in the Santee basin’s swamps, forests, and marshes included many

birds, mammals, and reptiles. The wildfowl were among the most prominent inhabitants in sight

and sound. Sass described the attraction of birds to the wooded stands of cypress:

The cypresses are crowded with nests; and on the nests, in the branches and in the air, beautiful stately birds in scores or in hundreds stand or sail in an intricate maze of interweaving circles. The trees are alive with them, the air above is thronged with them. Graceful, vari-colored herons are there . . . . but loveliest of all are the great white egrets, standing like slender statuettes of glistening marble in the green cypress tops or sweeping back and forth overhead, trailing their long nuptial plumes behind them as they fly (1931:26-27).

While some birds were drawn to forested areas, others preferred more open wetland habitats.

Robert Allen of the Audubon Society noted that the cypress marshes provided habitat for the

“finest Egret rookeries outside of Florida” where “Egrets and Vultures pass[ed] each other like angels of good and evil” (1939:174). The Santee basin was a prominent wintering area for river ducks and surface-feeding ducks, including Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos platyrhynchos),

American Black Ducks (Anas rubripes), Widgeon (Anas Americana), Northern Pintail Ducks

(Anas acuta), and Teals (Anas crecca) (Audubon Society 1935). The abundance of wildfowl in

the area enticed many people, especially wealthy Northern sportsmen, to buy land as duck

hunting fields or to pool together their resources to form hunting clubs. In addition, wild turkeys roamed throughout the area.

Wildlife in the basin among its forests and swamps also included many mammals and

reptiles, which were attracted to the variety of vegetation for food. A description of the swamp

habitat for wildlife was included in the WPA guide to South Carolina (presumably written by

Berkeley County resident Henry Ravenel Dwight). He wrote that among “the flooded forests”

where “tulip trees spread their fanlike leaves; wild turkeys, deer, bears and wildcats challenge the hunter. Posed on slim pink legs, herons rise and drift away in snowy clouds” (Works Progress

Administration 1941[1988]:295). The local deer population attracted hunters and was

“responsible for the establishment of innumerable private preserves by wealthy sportsmen”

(WPA Natural Resources 1939:11). Other smaller mammals like rabbits, bobcats, and foxes

were also frequent inhabitants. Nocturnal animals included opossum and raccoons. There were

countless snakes, many of which were poisonous, such as rattlesnakes, copperheads, and

cottonmouths.

The basin area was also home to the calcareous forest communities, a scattering of small

but unique ecological communities in the Southeast region. The major distinguishing feature is

the limestone deposits that lie just beneath the soil as a relic of the era when the ocean covered

the coastal plain. Some of these deposits hardened into rocky outcroppings where erosion

exposed them. The high pH of the soil provides specific nutrients for particular species of plants

that thrive in these conditions. Botanist Richard Porcher described the area as “a botanical

paradise” of abundant and rare plants (2004). Trees found in these special conditions include

yellow chesnut oak (Quercus muhlenbergii) and slippery elm (Ulmus rubra). Plant species that

are common to this type of region include crested coral root (Hexalectris spicata), shadow-witch

(Ponthieva racimosa), and mottled trillium (Trillium maculatum) (Porcher and Rayner 2001:93-

94).

The heterogeneity of the landscape can be seen in aerial images of the Santee basin from

the 1930s (Figures 2.3 and 2.4). These pictures show in detail the land to be inundated by the dammed lakes. They were taken in 1938 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The pictures

and the map were part of a soil survey, but they also contain notations about where the future

Santee Cooper project would be built. Provided to me by the Berkeley County GIS lab, many of the other images from this collection show larger expanses of forests, up to ninety percent in some of the pictures. However, these photos also demonstrate that there was indeed land under cultivation in the Santee basin at that time and in the preceding decade. Figure 2.3 is of the

Black Oak area that contained the storied Black Oak church, and Figure 2.4 is of the area where the Pinopolis dam and powerhouse would be built.

Both images show that, in these particular segments, about half (roughly 50%) of the land

was cultivated or formerly cultivated fields in the midst of the forests. In other words, it was not

a total forest or swamp. These images also illustrate roads that run through the basin. It is

notable that several intersections of roads are present. Some of the roads go through the forests

and some pass by the fields of cutover land. In very tiny detail appear a few structures such as

houses and churches. All of this land shown in Figure 2.3 would be flooded under the Pinopolis

reservoir.

The very top of the picture in Figure 2.4 illustrates the doomed community of Macbeth.

Notation to signify the development of the Pinopolis dam and powerhouse is shown in light ink.

The words “Power House” and “Dam” and “New Road” are written along pencil-drawn lines over land that is both forested and cleared. This picture is also significant because it shows the

Atlantic Coast Line railroad cutting through the middle of the picture vertically. Although not drawn in the picture, the Tailrace canal would be excavated from where the power house is located all the way over to the far right side of the picture. Bridges for the road, which is U. S.

Highway 52, and the railroad tracks would have to be built over the new canal.

The Santee Delta, which lies downstream of the basin, is another ecologically important

area. The delta received a maximum flow of 360,000 cubic feet of fresh water per second

(during periodic freshets) down to a low 2,500 feet per second (in times of drought) from the

Santee River in pre-dam conditions. The resulting coastal marshland made the delta a haven for freshwater wild ducks (Kauffman 1939) and additional indigenous waterfowl and shore birds.

The different salinity zones present in the delta created specialized ecological niches and ecotones. Based on the data they had available from 1942, Zachary Nixon created a map for the

Nature Conservancy that shows the pre-Santee Cooper major vegetation classes of the Santee

Delta (Nixon 2004). The data was interpolated from an old 1942 map that contained major vegetative classes. These zones of vegetation, called salinity tolerance classes, range from the

freshwater, oligohaline (intermediate) communities to the mesohaline (brackish) to the

polyhaline (saltwater) communities. From the 1942 interpolated data, it is clear that the separate

vegetative zones exist, becoming more saline-adapted in concentration toward the coast (Figure

2.5). Each zone of “progressive salinity . . . has its own favored type of vegetation and biological life” (Darling 1939:5).

The coastal marsh environment served as a wintering, feeding and resting place for ducks

and herons. The marsh zone of the Santee Delta was not only beneficial for wildfowl but also

for fish, crabs, shrimp, and mollusks that received food and a place to breed within the marshes.

Because of the wildlife in the area, the federal government established the Cape Romain bird

sanctuary (now a wildlife refuge) in 1932. During the 1930s, the U. S. Biological Survey

director and later president of the National Wildlife Federation J. N. “Ding” Darling, emphasized

the importance of the Santee River Delta for providing vital habitat for migratory wildfowl.

Protesting vociferously against the project, Darling warned that Santee Cooper would “turn 500

square miles of the most perfect and prolific spawning grounds of aquatic food species into a

barren wasteland as unproductive as the Kansas dust bowl” (1939:5).

However, the delta was not only pristine wilderness. Rather, it had been shaped by

humans over centuries from rice agriculture. As a longtime resident of his family’s plantation of

Hampton along the banks of the Santee, state poet Archibald Rutledge claimed that almost all of

the more than a hundred thousand acres of the delta “was solid rice field” with an “immense

system of dikes and floodgates” that remained in use until about 1915 (1956:12-13,112). He

recognizes the role of succession in changing his beloved delta to swamp when he recognizes the old rice bank was “so old that full-grown trees are standing on it” (1956:95).

While not technically part of the Santee Basin, the Cooper River region created another

ecologically distinct community with edge effects. A small river, it received most of its flow

from local rainfall before the Santee Cooper project diverted the of the Santee River waters into

it. It is called a “blackwater” river since its water is darkened by the tannin produced by rotting

vegetation (Porcher and Rayner 2001:94). This river is also historically linked to the rice

plantation culture, with immense plantation fields and mansions lining its banks. The creation of

the rice fields converted the lands adjacent to the river from swamp or marsh to agricultural

zones in the forms of fields maintained by gates and dikes. In 1842, Charleston doctor John

Irving narrated his travels past these storied “rich and cultivated plantations” (1932[1969]:23) and other points of interests in A Day on Cooper River. He describes the winding parts of the

river thus:

It treads its way stealthily as it were, like a wounded snake, tortuous for many miles, meandering through the thick marsh, whilst as far as the eye can reach, the back ground is covered with lofty pines and cedars – the verdant growth of undisturbed centuries! (1932[1969]:22)

In this passage, Dr. Irving alluded to his awe at seeing nature and plantations in harmony on the

Cooper River. Planters had mostly abandoned these Cooper River rice fields by the twentieth century, although some maintained them to attract wildfowl for hunters.

The freshwater marsh communities present in the Cooper River system “are among the most diverse wetland plant communities in the United States,” with over one hundred vascular plant species known to exist there (Porcher and Rayner 2001:99-100). They contain flora such as the pickerel weed and swamp rose, as well as spiderlily (Hymenocallis floridana) and water hemlock (Cicuta maculate). Such rich aquatic vegetation enabled these old rice fields serve as feeding grounds for ducks, migratory waterfowl and alligators.

Human occupancy and sustained use imprinted heavily on the landscape as well. Both

Rutledge (1956) and Savage (1956) note that most plantation homes in the Santee region burned and were almost never rebuilt or maintained, a symbol of reduced circumstances. Instead, white persons tended to move to nearby towns and cities. Those who lived in the rural areas typically lived in small houses. Sass described the “ugly stretches of cut-over land and thinly wooded pine barrens with here and there an unkempt clearing around a group of decrepit cabins”

(1931:28). While some of these anthropogenic places were considered blights on the natural landscape, they had historical meaning that added character to the basin area.

At the time of the Santee Cooper development, several writers anticipated what would be lost to the massive hydroelectric project. From his perspective as a forester, Kauffman estimated that the Santee basin area amounted to 119,000 acres of lands capable of producing valuable timber, with sixty-five percent of the volume concentrated in the 19,000 acres of land that he considered virgin hardwoods (1939:7-8). The American Forestry Association considered the ash and cypress stands to be the most economically valuable (Kauffman 1939:9).

As a result of centuries of human land use, thousands of acres of land in the Santee basin

reflected agricultural activity. Of the 170,000 acres required for inundation, 100,000 acres were

called “cutover land,” or lands that had been used for growing crops. Forester Kauffman included these in his description of lands that could be used to grow trees (1939). However, the

Landowners Association of the Santee Cooper basin and others claimed that there were fully

32,800 acres of cultivated land in 1939 (“An Observer” 1939:1, “Land Owners” 1939:12-II,

Dwight 1939:5-B). Several naturalists who described the Santee landscape in the 1930s decried the loss of the ecological attributes of this unique wetland environment. Robert Allen of the

Audubon Society summed up the planned destruction of the cypress swamps by saying that “the

loss of this habitat would very likely mean the loss of certain species that have no other

wilderness in which to retreat” (1935:443).

The downstream effects of the Santee Cooper project would involve both the Cooper

River, which would receive a large flow from the diverted Santee, and the Santee Delta itself.

People expected that the predicted increase in freshwater and sediment flow would ruin the delicate balance of the freshwater marshes downstream. The diversion of the river would also greatly alter the productive coastal marsh of the Santee Delta by reducing fresh water flow to this wildlife refuge to a minimum of 500 cubic feet per second. Marine life in the adjacent Atlantic, dependent on the breeding grounds of these marshes would be adversely affected by the depletion of a freshwater source. Santee Cooper was “irrefutably destined to ruin the last great unpolluted and natural fish incubator on the Atlantic Coast” (Darling 1939:5).

The unique basin area and its surrounding ecosystems included productive swamps,

forests, freshwater marshes and saltwater estuaries. Pictures, early botany surveys, and personal

descriptions give a picture of the former Santee basin as an area with much heterogeneity and

biological diversity. All of this would be threatened with the creation of the Santee Cooper

project.

Historical Beginnings of Santee Cooper

Moneymen and politicians of the twentieth century were not the first to propose joining

the Santee and Cooper Rivers for commercial reasons. A charter for work to complete a

navigation canal linking the Santee and Cooper Rivers was granted in 1786. “The Company for

the Inland Navigation from the Santee to Cooper River” generated much excitement, making it

among the first commercial canal systems in American history (by the time it was built, another

had been operating in New England). George Washington himself expressed interest in the

project. Entrepreneurs and local families put up the money for the scheme, including such

important state figures as Francis Marion, Thomas Sumter, and John and Edward Rutledge

(Porcher 1875 [1950]: 2). The superintendent they hired to direct the work was Swedish

engineer Colonel John Christian Senf. Instead of employing the more natural course of the rivers

as proposed by Henry Mouzon (Figure 2.6), Senf formed new artificial paths to connect the two

waterways, starting at White Oak Creek along the Santee River and going to Biggin Creek on the

Cooper River. This would later prove to be unwise in times of drought, when barely a trickle of

water would make the course. Construction started in 1793 on the 22-mile-long, 35-feet-wide at the surface, five-and-a-half-foot-deep canal. Locks were placed at intervals to allow barges to continue along the different water levels. The canal directors employed slave labor, often provided by the local planter families.

When the Santee Canal was completed eight years later in 1800, the cost totaled nearly

$700,000, almost twice the original estimate (Bennett 1988: 53). Even more sobering was the

human toll of the canal work, as many lost their lives to malarial fever contracted by working in

mosquito-laden conditions. The canal, operating on toll revenue, was only fully operational for a

short time because there was an insufficient flow of water. The canal quickly fell into poor

condition because it lacked adequate funding for needed repairs. By the middle of the nineteenth

century, however, the canal was no longer considered practical because of more efficient railroad

service in the area. Says Professor Frederick Porcher of the venture, “The brilliant hopes which

had ushered it into existence began to decline, until they entirely disappeared, and this great,

useful and important enterprise was known only as a commercial failure” (1875[1950]: 3). The

Charter was closed by the State Legislature in 1853. Almost all the investors, many of them

local families, lost hundreds to thousands of dollars in this early navigation venture.

Another basin tragedy occurred after an energetic group from Massachusetts arrived to create a utopian farming community in a low part of the basin in the late nineteenth century.

They called the new settlement Chicora or New England City, and they established the community on a railroad line about eight miles from Pinopolis. Unfortunately, many of the inhabitants of this low-lying area quickly became sick with malaria and died. The rest moved back to the North; the failure and disappearance of that settlement occurred within a single generation.

South Carolina was a formerly prosperous state, especially in agricultural pursuits like

indigo, rice, and then cotton, but the Civil War halted its development. War destroyed the state’s

infrastructure, and the value of cotton and corn crops dropped quickly. The Reconstruction Era

was marked by a further decline in agricultural production owing to a large-scale shortfall in

labor, since many African Americans migrated north to seek work. By 1870, the value of

property had declined statewide by eighty percent, with over one million dollars owed by people

in overdue land taxes (Kovacik and Winberry: 106). Land tenancy through sharecropping or

cash rent became the common mode of production, with tenant holdings averaging forty-four acres per household in 1910 (Kovacik and Winberry: 107).

The waning price for cotton, the declining fertility of agricultural soils, and the boll

weevil infestation that started in 1919 decimated the crops and diminished the farmers’ abilities

to depend on them. As a result, sixty-five percent of South Carolina’s farms were run by tenants in 1920 (Porcher and Rayner 2001:60). As the price of cotton fell, South Carolina employment levels declined precipitously and the Depression further exacerbated the economic decline.

Employment levels quickly decreased in the cities of Columbia and Charleston as well as in towns. By the mid-thirties, fifty-three percent of Southern farm families were tenants; the average tenant family received only seventy-three dollars per person per year for those engaged in cotton farming (National Emergency Council to President Roosevelt 1938:3). These tenant farmers were particularly vulnerable to the economic decline. Hayes cites many instances of malnourishment and even cases of starvation (2001:8-9). He explains that, statewide, people coped by reducing their wants, cutting back on meals, and providing for themselves through self- sufficient growth of gardens and livestock (2001:9). I discuss more of this in Chapter Five.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected President in 1932 by a country mired in the Great

Depression and seeking a way out. In 1933, the United States Congress passed a program called

the New Deal to answer urgent appeals for help from poverty-stricken states. Besides the

agricultural programs that assisted farmers nationwide, several federal agencies were created to

promote economic development. The Public Works Administration (PWA) gave money and

support for large public infrastructure developments such as hydroelectric dams, airports,

schools, roads, bridges, and hospitals. The Works Progress Administration (which later changed

its name to the Work Projects Administration) (WPA) gave jobs to people on relief rolls in many

areas such as building, art, and writing projects. These agencies, along with the Federal Works

Agency (FWA) played a central role in the New Deal by establishing the foundation for a new

developmental state. With the New Deal program, government priorities shifted to the creation

of state-sponsored economic development projects (J. S. Smith 2006). These projects are notable

because they created new bureaucratic forms, bringing in specialists like engineers, contractors,

and lawyers to apply newly coordinated knowledge to the creation of large-scale, technocratic

government projects. The New Dealers “wrought in concrete and steel a tangible representation of a political philosophy” (J. S. Smith 2006:258). This new government outlook, which spurred public works, amounted to a progressive liberalism. Effectively, the New Deal transformed the political, economic, environmental and social landscape for the remainder of the twentieth century.

South Carolina’s experience with the New Deal commenced with the programs of the

federal Agricultural Adjustment Administration, which assisted farmers and limited the

cultivation of certain crops. In a state so heavily dependent on agriculture, these policies helped stabilize crop prices. This stabilization led to a decline in tenancy, since the government payments for crop reduction, parity, and conservation allowed tenants and farmers to “acquire a capital base that financed increased agricultural mechanization” (Kovacik and Winberry: 127).

South Carolina needed some environmental protection because its soil was severely depleted by the overproduction of cotton. The Soil Conservation Service, a related initiative, was established at that time to promote practices that prevented soil erosion, such as the planting of cover crops and trees.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was created on a national level to give

unemployed people jobs in public service. WPA workers in South Carolina constructed roads

and public buildings and recorded local history and culture. Several astute politicians saw,

however, that additional incoming federal monies and projects could improve South Carolina’s

infrastructure through another New Deal agency, the Public Works Administration (PWA).

Thanks to the persuasive dealings of Senator James “Jimmy” F. Byrnes, a close friend of

Roosevelt, South Carolina received its share of New Deal money for restoring the state’s mostly agricultural economy and providing jobs for many of its citizens3. Charleston mayor, then state

governor, then United States Senator Burnet Maybank, another local politician, is credited for supporting Santee Cooper from its early stages. For this tireless promotion of that venture, he reaped many political rewards (Cann 1967).

While the old Santee Canal sat in disrepair and decay, overtaken by local vegetation for

seventy-plus years, interest began growing for the development of water-powered electricity in

South Carolina. In the beginning of the twentieth century, power companies focused on the

Saluda River in the middle of the state as a place to create a dammed lake and hydro-electric facility to provide electric power in the region. This project was completed in 1930 and Lake

Murray was its result. Another hydroelectric project, Buzzard’s Roost, was planned for the upstate to create Lake Greenwood by damming an upper branch of the Saluda River. Naturally, enterprising men again focused their attention on the Santee and Cooper Rivers, especially

Columbia businessman Thomas Clay “T. C.” Williams. Although he did not live to see the creation of power from the Santee waters, T. C. Williams is considered the visionary of the

Santee Cooper project. He formed the Columbia Railway and Navigation Company, managing a

3 For an excellent political history of the federal creation of the Santee-Cooper project, read David Robinson’s Sly and Able: A Political Biography of James F. Byrnes, where the author gives much credit to Senator Byrnes for securing the project amid many political battles, particularly with the taciturn Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes.

boat line between Columbia and Georgetown (Quattlebaum 1941). In 1926, the Federal Power

Commission granted to the Columbia Railway and Navigation Company a license to develop the

Santee Cooper project.

Because the promoters of the new navigation project could not afford to finance it through private means, they wanted a share of the New Deal money being doled out to most states. After a number of legislators visited Washington to garner support from officials there,

South Carolina legislators labored at home to make the Santee Cooper project public by introducing a bill in the state House and Senate. The South Carolina Public Service Authority

was created by an act of law, signed by Governor Ibra Blackwood on May 19, 1934. The plan

was to dam up the Santee River and divert its flow into the Cooper River, which spills out into

Charleston Harbor. On July 15, 1935, President Roosevelt informally approved the project in a letter to United States Senator James Byrnes (Roosevelt 1935). Secretary of the Interior Harold

Ickes, who oversaw the PWA, grudgingly gave formal approval with a federal allocation of

$37,000,000, the largest amount given for a project on the East Coast (Robertson 1989: 202-

203). Private power companies, outraged at the overstepping of boundaries by the United States

government, immediately filed the matter with the court in December 1935 (Santee Cooper nd).

Not until May 23, 1938, however, almost two and a half years later, did the Supreme Court

refuse to overturn the original favorable ruling of Judge J. Lyles Glenn. With this judicial

decision, the courts permitted the Santee Cooper project to continue as a federal and state-

supported public project.

After the Supreme Court upheld Glenn’s original verdict, the South Carolina Public

Service Authority issued the first contracts for exploration into the subsurface of the earth that

would hold the water and the dams. The underground exploratory work, or borings, began on

August 24, 1938 (Gerald 1941). In early 1939, the PWA and the South Carolina Public Service

Authority accepted the financial arrangements, which totaled over fifty-seven million dollars

(Santee Cooper 1950). It was not until April 13, 1939, that Santee Cooper acquired the license to operate from the Federal Power Commission from the Columbia Railway and Navigation

Company that had held it since 1926. That same April saw the commencement of the clearing of the lower basin, once the Authority was able to purchase some of that land. Eventually, the

Authority would have to acquire over 170,000 acres of land in 1,326 separate tracts (Santee

Cooper 1950).

The WPA was brought in to clear the land; they employed out-of-work persons from all over the state of South Carolina, hiring thousands of men to clear the basin and housing them in small cabins arranged as camps. These men cleared the trees with hand saws and sometimes wagons. This undertaking was termed “the largest clearing project in the United States” (The

News and Courier 1941x: A-14, Edgar 1984). Many of the trees were sold as timber by the

Authority (Santee Cooper 1950). The WPA men also moved over six thousand graves out of the basin (Santee Cooper 1950). Another New Deal administration, the Farm Security

Administration (FSA) of the USDA, was responsible for helping most of the 901 families who had to move their homes out of the Santee basin area.

Progress on the project commenced and continued quickly, with the various New Deal agencies and the construction contractors quickly employing thousands of workers. The PWA and its many contractors oversaw the building of the dams and the dikes. The South Carolina

Public Service Authority awarded contracts, but they had to be approved by the PWA. The

Authority hired the Harza Engineering Company of Chicago as the main contractor for the construction of the dams, lock, and powerhouse. The Central Engineering Company was another

large contractor for the project. After the excavation for the foundation, the pouring of concrete for the power house began the official construction of the Pinopolis power house on November

29, 1939.

The project employed 12,500 people at peak construction (Want 1941:G-1), but the total

number of jobs was larger as thousands more were employed due to frequent, high worker

turnover on the project. As the dam neared its finish and clearing of the upper basin area had

been started, World War II was pressing on the United States government and its citizens. On

June 27, 1941, President Roosevelt issued an order to shorten the project’s deadline so power

would be more quickly provided for the nascent war industries in Charleston. These included the

Navy Yard, which built naval vessels; Pittsburgh Metallurgical; and an aluminum plant.

The creation of the dams, dikes and power house was a massive feat of engineering and

power. Two dams and lakes were built: the Santee dam and spillway, a length of 7.8 miles that

created the upper Lake Marion, and the 1.4 mile-long Pinopolis Dam (and its power station) that

resulted in the lower Lake Moultrie. The entire project required 3,144,100 cubic yards of poured

concrete and over 22,000 tons of steel (Santee Cooper 1950). The project workers constructed

twenty-six miles of dikes to hold in the lake waters. The power house is part of the 88-foot-high

Pinopolis Dam; it measures 185 feet by 380 feet and contains five turbines and five generators,

producing about 625,000,000 available Kilowatt hours annually in the 1940s (Santee Cooper

1950). Another feat of engineering was the 75-foot single lift lock, the highest in the United

States at that time, which took boats from the lake down to the Tailrace Canal below and then back again by shifting the water levels in a vault-like lock. The 75-foot drop between the

Pinopolis lake and the Tailrace canal below, leading into the Cooper River, which sits at sea level, provided adequate elevation for the waters to create power through the turbines.

The diversion canal that linked the upper lake to the lower lake was carved out of the earth to measure 200 feet wide and seven and a half miles long (Moore 1941). The Santee Dam and spillway that holds up Lake Marion (the upper lake) is 7.8 miles long and 48 feet tall at the spillway. While this upper dam did not generate power, it better regulated the flow of the Santee

River, which was 18,000 cubic feet per second, or 12 billion gallons a day, which is the same as a flow of 18.4 acre-feet of water each second (Santee Cooper 1950). By displacing the Santee

River watershed, this project became the first hydro-electric facility built in a tidal area in the

United States, below the fall line (Santee Cooper 1950). The project changed the hydrology of an entire region.

The impoundment of the water from the Santee River began on November 12, 1941, after the gates on the spillway were closed (Santee Cooper 1950). A month later the turbines were tested with the Santee waters rushing through the power house. On February 17, 1942, the power house began generating electricity and sent it to the Pittsburgh Metallurgical Company in

Charleston. Power production thus began, with the flow of the impounded Santee River generating an estimated 450 million kilowatt hours of regular power and 250 million hours of secondary power (The News and Courier 1941r:G-11).

The inundation thus created two lakes and 415 miles of shoreline with approximately

160,000 acres of land: the upper lake, covering 100,618 acres (total land and water area of

118,233 acres), and the lower lake, enveloping 61,814 acres (with 70,390 acres of land and water) (The News and Courier 1941r:G-11). The upper lake (Marion) is relatively shallow, but the Pinopolis reservoir (Lake Moultrie) is sixty feet deep. The Santee Cooper project “is a story of superlatives that have changed the landscape of lower South Carolina” (Want 1941:G-1).

Francis Marion Kirk wrote that the lakes would drown the historical sites and graves of two of South Carolina’s most famous Revolutionary war heroes, Generals Francis “Swamp Fox”

Marion and William Moultrie. To preserve their memories, Mr. Kirk pleaded impassionately that the Santee Cooper lakes be named after these two Revolutionary war generals: “To those for whom the history of South Carolina means something . . . and to those for whom there is true devotion for lands to be destroyed, there are no other names that should be considered” (1940:4).

With a nod to history, the two reservoirs created by the hydroelectric project were named Lake

Marion and Lake Moultrie by an act of the South Carolina state legislature.

Only twenty-two miles away at its closest point to the Santee, the Cooper River was originally a fifty-mile tidal estuary that met the Atlantic at the port in Charleston. The 7.5 mile diversion canal that connected the lakes directed the fast-flowing waters of the Santee into the

Cooper River, altering the flow from less than 100 cubic feet per second to over 15,000 cubic feet per second, creating siltation and shoaling that had to be dredged from the Charleston

Harbor (Moore 1981: 89). In 1985, a rediversion canal was constructed to return most of that diverted water back into the Santee River.

The project also created the Tailrace Canal, a stretch of four miles connecting the dammed Santee River to the nearby Cooper River. This accomplishment has been termed the first river diversion in the United States for the purpose of power creation and navigation (Santee

Cooper 1950). The project also created the large single-lift lock of the Pinopolis dam, which brought waters and boats from seventy-five feet above sea level down to the Tailrace canal and back. However, the navigational features of Santee Cooper were never used for any large-scale commercial transport.

Overall, the project resulted in what Santee Cooper claimed to be the single largest land-

clearing project in the United States. The incredible amount of earth moved − 40,569,000 cubic

yards − is an achievement of great human effort and engineering. This digging included large-

scale excavations of limestone and marl as well as regular dirt that had to be displaced to make

way for the lakes, dams, and canals. A raster-data satellite image of South Carolina (Figure 2.7)

shows the former path of the Santee River and how the hydrology has been changed by the

creation of the two large lakes.

The story of the Santee River in its many incarnations continues. In eulogizing the

mighty river in the era of the Santee Cooper construction, writer John Lofton assesses its epic

tale:

Through centuries of South Carolina history the Santee has run like a connecting thread. It has linked the past with present, Upcountry with Lowcountry, wildness with civilization. Francis Marion and the British crossed and recrossed it. Federal gunboats sailed it. Its valley has grown rice and cotton and its current has carried cargo ships. It provides a fit subject for reflection with memories hovering over its plantations and visions over its dams (1941:E- 16).

Thus, the Santee basin and the region went from one rural wooded paradise of swampy lowlands

to an electricity-producing and recreation giant within only a few years.

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is another example of public power agency in the

Southeastern United States during the 1930s. Since the Santee Cooper project was often called a

“Little TVA,” a comparison of their similarities and differences is appropriate. Santee Cooper is similar to TVA in many aspects, such as the fact that private power companies and political conservatives bitterly fought against each project from its conception. Both agencies were given

“blank checks” by the federal government to achieve regional goals such as employment and industrialization, which was typical of New Deal infrastructure projects (Conkin 1983:32).

Land acquisition, removal of cemeteries, and the relocation of families in the push to bring

economic progress to the area were also characteristic of both developments.

Although TVA had intellectual roots that predated the New Deal, the political will for

implementation of the plans did not exist until Roosevelt was elected and he threw his support

behind it. The main objectives of TVA were to improve navigation, flood control, and to

develop electric power for the region. Another ostensible goal of TVA that hearkens to the New

Deal era was the plan to provide socioeconomic benefits in the form of a social experiment to a

“forgotten population” (McDonald and Muldowny 1982). Of these many TVA infrastructure

developments, the Norris Dam was an early, huge New Deal project that displaced the most

people. The uprooting of Norris basin residents from their homes and communities led to

massive social disruption in the form of rural overpopulation. Although TVA promised to bring

industry and modernization to the local economy, the failure of the agency to execute its goals

led to a flow of people leaving the region to find work elsewhere. Additional TVA dam projects

did not have the same human impact as the Norris dam did, but the agency continued to add and

expand its public works for the purposes of regional economic development and electric power

service.

While similar in its main goals of providing power, economic growth, and navigation,

Santee Cooper differed from TVA in significant ways. Owing to the topography in the

Tennessee Valley, the steeper gradient of the land allowed more dams along the river. The hilly

landscape in the Tennessee region ranged from mountainous to piedmont ecosystems. Santee

Cooper, on the other hand, is located in the coastal plain, where a larger, flatter area of land was inundated. The diversion of the water affected different gradients of saltwater and freshwater ecosystems that were particular to the coastal plain region. For example, the Santee delta lies

66 within a few dozen miles of the dam, and the indigenous vegetation and wildlife were drastically affected by the shift in both the Santee and the Cooper rivers’ altered courses.

The human occupation of the land in each situation was dissimilar, both pre- and post- project. In the case of TVA, Tennessee farmers and tenants had traditionally occupied and cultivated smaller plots of land than in South Carolina, with its history of a large land-holding white planter class (Creese 1990:85). Most of the people living in the Norris Basin area of

Tennessee were white. In the Santee Basin, African Americans had a long history of settlement and accounted for a majority of the population there. TVA constructed for its Norris Basin residents entire “model” villages with houses, stores, and agricultural buildings where they would relocate, spending considerable time and money in the conception of the utopian craft and farming village. Santee Cooper is different because the government officials planned to resettle the Santee basin communities based on existing group ties. However, the project did not have the funds to rehouse the displaced families, who scattered among different areas around the reservoirs. Both projects led to patterns of out-migration of former residents, but most of the people who were displaced by Santee Cooper were African American.

Several historians have written scholarly assessments of the impact of Santee Cooper; those assessments have shifted back and forth over time. Walter Edgar, the eminent South

Carolina historian who penned a corporate history to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the project, evaluates the building of Santee Cooper as essential to saving South Carolina from the grip of the Depression (1984). He points out that the project’s original forty million dollar budget was an enormous seven to eight times the size of the entire annual budget of the South

Carolina state government in the late 1930s (1984). The lasting legacy of Santee Cooper, as he considers it, is as an excellent service provider of public utilities to the citizens of South Carolina

(Santee Cooper 1984). Some local residents, however, grumble that this corporate version is

“sanitized” by excluding any negative talk about Santee Cooper, particularly regarding the condemnation of families’ lands. Edgar’s corporate history, featuring the impressive political story of the beginnings of the Santee Cooper project and many awe-inspiring pictures, is a perfect example of how the state sought to manage the public perception of the Santee Cooper project by presenting it in a wholly positive light.

Publishing ten years later, James Robertson claims in a biography of South Carolina’s beloved statesman James Byrnes that Santee Cooper vaulted Senator Byrnes to the Supreme

Court because he proved his dexterity in fighting the private power companies (1994:244).

Robertson’s opinion of Santee Cooper was that the project never brought the promised industrial growth to the area; he argues that instead, the growth of the economy was not in industry but in the retail and services that are linked to the growth of the coastal tourism cities of Charleston and

Myrtle Beach (1994). The other lasting effect of Santee Cooper cited by Robertson is the formation of the lakes for the year-round recreation of fishing and boating.

In his book about the New Deal era in South Carolina, Jack Irby Hayes, Jr. credits Santee

Cooper with several far-reaching economic and social effects. He mentions that Santee Cooper generated electricity to complete rural electrification, helped spur the service sector economy and employment, and advanced public health and recreation opportunities in the state. He sums up

Santee Cooper’s impact by writing, “on balance the project was beneficial” (Hayes 2001:84).

In this dissertation, I assess these claims by asking the interviewees from the Berkeley

County area this question: “What are Santee Cooper’s lasting impacts?” Because of the massive scale of changes to the basin, their assessments of the effects will be closely tied to their views of landscape change. Chapter Eight contains this evaluation of how people think Santee Cooper

68 has affected their lives and the regions in which they live. I aim to discover not only the immediate and economic impacts but also the significance and changed meanings of a sixty-five year-old New Deal project on their lives today.

CHAPTER 3

PROMOTING A LANDSCAPE OF PROGRESS

In this chapter I seek to elucidate the shared mental models that shaped the passionate

debate over the creation and construction of the Santee Cooper project. This is an important

point because the discourse about the project led to the justification of such a large-scale

environmental change. The writers of the primary documents engaged in the debate over Santee

Cooper envisioned two distinct outcomes of the transformation of the Lowcountry landscape –

for one group, the proposed project represented a chance to turn around the economic decline of

the state through industrial growth and the creation of jobs. The other group maintained that the

project would dispossess landowners of their ancestral homes and family farms as well as

obliterate the renowned historical and environmental features of the basin area.

I evaluated the perceptions of the landscape change and the economic significance of the

project from the point of view of the writers of the primary documents for both sides. That is,

those who would lose or gain something from the Santee Cooper project felt compelled to write

against it or for it and to explicate the points that bolstered their cases. I investigated the

thematic patterns in the documents by using the methods of cultural models.

In employing cultural models as a mode of analysis, I should restate that what I intended

to study was the discourse (or writing) about the landscape, through which I hoped to uncover

the patterns of discourse surrounding the Santee Cooper project. As with any source of data employed in qualitative analysis, a researcher must consider the issue of bias. In this research, the historical primary documents I analyzed revealed the writers’ varying purposes. Because many of these writers had vested interests in the project, they employed rhetorical strategies to persuade the public to support their cause. In short, the writers sought to garner support through

the means available to them. In terms of cultural models, the data’s usefulness might be limited

because the writers might be using their words as a means to an end (in this case, supporting or protesting Santee Cooper). The issue lies in a potential division between what they wrote

regarding the benefits or problems with the proposed project and what they really thought (which

would reflect greater cultural meaning). For example, one could claim that the promoters were

disingenuous in overstating the benefits of Santee Cooper while minimizing its problems. The

promoters also accused the protesters of using sentimental ploys to arouse protest against the

project.

The idea that the cultural models of these writers could demonstrate their perceptions of

the Santee Cooper landscape means that I must confront the bias in a particular way. For this

purpose, it is helpful to view the writers as stakeholders instead of unbiased sources. Here, I

employ the term “stakeholders” (Brosius 1999, Brandenburg and Carroll 1995) to introduce the idea that people argued for or against Santee Cooper from their different points of view.

Brandenburg and Carroll use the stakeholder concept to describe the ways in which people value particular landscapes and attachment to place (1995) based on their experiences with a certain river drainage area and their views of it, ranging from strong emotional attachment to utilitarian to symbolic. The notion of stakeholder is useful for demonstrating that people held certain

opinions of the Santee Cooper project based on their economic or political vested interests in and

emotional ties to the landscape. Such values and beliefs that are related to land use are important

for understanding the writers’ positions and are reflected in the documents. In this way, I ascribe

to the writers of those documents a level of sincerity while still acknowledging that they relied

on several strategies in defending their vested interests and position.

While they did employ rhetoric and stylistic means to promote their case to the public, it

can be said that justifiable cultural meaning lies within the arguments because their opinions

reveal the current, harsh economic realities in which the writers found themselves. These

realities included widespread poverty, failed agriculture, and a lack of industrialization in the region. For other writers, the harsh reality that Santee Cooper presented was the threat of losing their homes.

The documents written by the supporters and detractors of the Santee Cooper project

convey more than standard reason and facts. They also reveal passion and conviction. I could

place these types of documents on a continuum between those most likely written for strategic

aims and those that are most likely representative of a person’s heartfelt experience. The

documents that tend to represent strategic rhetorical purposes include the federal officials’

speeches and editorials, which were created for the largest audience possible. On the other end

of the spectrum are documents that express a high degree of sincerity: personal letters and letters

to the editor that convey personal reactions to the events.

It is important to note that this primary text analysis does not evaluate the way people had

perceived the actual, on-the-ground landscape change but rather the broader impacts they had

anticipated (I obtained memories of landscape change through oral history interviews, presented

in Chapters Six and Seven). Both camps realized much of the basin would soon be inundated,

but some viewed this as a potential for economic benefit, thanks to the creation of electric power,

while others could not forget that their hallowed ground would soon be under water. I chose the

historical texts from many sources – newspaper columns, personal letters, speeches, and letters to

editors of newspapers – based on whether their authors had adequately expressed a viewpoint

and a coherent level of argument. Then, I transcribed each document and coded them for themes

in a qualitative analysis program. I did not first choose the themes and then code the documents.

Instead, the statements and positions put forth in the texts themselves drove the creation and

coding of themes. Finally, I judged the shared patterns and linked them to form cultural models.

The Architects of Change

In the primary historical texts supporting the hydroelectric project, the promoters

comprised an almost homogeneous group: all white males, many of them local-elected

government officials and federal government officials. United States Senator James “Jimmy”

Byrnes was an early champion of the project and a close friend of President Roosevelt. State-

elected officials of the era included Burnet Maybank, the former mayor of Charleston who

became Governor, former Governor Olin Johnston, and Governor Emile Harley. Congressman

John McMillan from the Sixth District was also a part of this group. The federal administrators charged with implementing New Deal programs on a national scale included Clark Foreman,

Director of the Public Works Administration (PWA); Kenneth Markwell, PWA chief engineer;

John Carmody, the Federal Works Agency (FWA) Administrator, which was over the PWA; and

Colonel M. E. Gilmore, PWA Commissioner. Occasionally, these men came down to South

Carolina – to Charleston, Columbia, and even Moncks Corner – to give speeches and submit press releases to the local media about the perceived benefits and progression of the project.

A third group of men promoting the project included employees of Santee-Cooper, which

is also known as the South Carolina Public Service Authority (the Authority). This group

includes Robert Cooper, chairman of the Authority; R. M. Jefferies, former state senator, lawyer

for the Authority and later head of Santee-Cooper; and Charles Gerald, secretary in the early

days of the Authority. This group submitted many editorials and press releases to the papers as

well as a few letters to the editor of The News and Courier, Charleston’s morning paper. Even

one anonymous employee (“An Employe[sic]”) took it upon himself to write a letter defending

the project in The News and Courier (1939: 4). The last group of men, businessmen from

Charleston, demonstrated their support for the project by writing personal letters to government

figures and the newspapers. Several other male writers, whose backgrounds remain unknown,

wrote to The News and Courier in support of Santee-Cooper. Generally, the opinions of the promoters represented the views of the reigning political and economic elites in the state.

The News and Courier served as the largest published forum for information about the

hydroelectric project, often printing verbatim the Authority’s press releases. The “Letters to the

Editor” section hosted the clamorous debate among its readers about the construction of the dam, attracting views from other parts of the state and even the country. Eventually, the local media leaders supported the project. William Watts Ball, the editor of The News and Courier, was a committed conservative and loathed all things related to the New Deal. For several years in the paper he challenged the project, especially the politics and greed that surrounded it, but he finally concluded that the project would benefit the region economically and that he would support it.

The discourse promoting the creation of Santee Cooper was largely straightforward in its

scope. While some made use of rhetorical tropes to appeal to the public for support, the

promoters generally stated the facts of their case in a frank and uncomplicated manner. Two particularly effusive champions of the project, federal PWA administrator John Carmody and

Santee Cooper development engineer Frederick McDonald, used metaphors and appeals to

sentiment and values in their documents. Carmody and McDonald make use of more

emotionally charged rhetoric to persuade a broad audience of the benefits of Santee Cooper.

The advertisement of the project and its purported benefits were even presented graphically in a promotional map by Santee Cooper (Figure 3.1). The map of the state spatially represents the proposed benefits of the project for all to see. On this map, the artist of the drawing highlights several existing and future geographical features related to the hydroelectric project. The two bodies of water to be created by Santee Cooper are in the center of the picture, with the enlarged powerhouse prominent at the bottom of the reservoirs. Surrounding the lakes is a network of railroad lines and electrical transmission lines that extend beyond the

Lowcountry. The lines reach into both rural areas and cities, which are depicted as grids of streets and buildings. These sketched-in areas would purportedly reap the power benefits and the

“permanent social value” of the future Santee Cooper project (Figure 3.1).

This chapter organizes the patterns and themes from the discourse to create a cultural model of how the promoters favored the hydroelectric development that would ultimately reshape the Santee basin landscape. The promoters employed several means to persuade the public of the benefits of Santee Cooper. They made use of popular media outlets of the era, including newspaper articles, editorials, pictures, and radio broadcasts. With money and power on their side, they had the means to disseminate their viewpoints to support the project. Their language framed the discussion about the project and aimed to justify Santee Cooper.

Cultural models of landscapes depend upon several interrelated levels of understanding, often implicit and hidden, that I seek to make explicit. Models are composed of mostly hierarchically embedded mental schemas, which are “abstract organizations of experience,” or representations, that are activated by the mind to make sense of reality (D’Andrade 1995). A cultural model contains an overarching, high-level schema that is typically a broad, abstract, fixed, and widely shared cultural ideal (Holland and Quinn 1987, Strauss and Quinn 1997).

Activating the upper-level schemas are several lower-level schemas that support them. The

embedded nature of cultural models means that there are “slots” to be filled at the schema level

that give more meaning to the model based on context and additional facts or experience

(D’Andrade 1995:123). These supporting schemas encompass particular domains, which are

broad categorical areas of conceptualization (D’Andrade 1995) in the discourse. Such domains

in this dissertation include those of economics, environment, and home. An upper-level,

generalized schema becomes a theme when it embraces a wide variety of contexts and can make

sense in many situations or circumstances and among different domains (Strauss and Quinn

1997:118-119).

The promoters invoked a particular cultural model of the Santee Cooper landscape in the

same way they shaped the debate. Inherent in this cultural model is the idea of progress, which

is the upper-level schema that drives the discussion from the Santee Cooper’s supporters.

Secondary, or middle-level, schemas that activate the upper-level schema of progress include the

frequently discussed schemas of industry/economy, opportunity, and prosperity. A third level of

schemas representing the more concrete, “fill-in slots” at more specific levels are the themes of

cheap power, employment, transportation, and natural resources. This inclusive cultural model is widely shared by the promoters. Since the politically and economically elite group of writers representing this perspective was closely tied to New Deal government goals, the documents supporting Santee Cooper varied little. Other schemas seemingly not related to the overall model but which I later demonstrate to be joined include the shift in the support of Santee

Cooper for national security and the promotion of the project as a public endeavor.

A Schema of Progress

In the development of my research design, I proposed that the main theme to be uncovered from the texts in favor of the Santee-Cooper project would be the schema of progress.

My preliminary proposition was that the high-level schema of progress would be the single word

used most by the promoters to draw support for the project. I reasoned that the promoters would appeal to higher-level abstract schemas and use idealistic language and metaphors, following

Dailey’s finding that the historical texts demonstrated an interpretation of environmental change

subsumed under the upper-level cultural ideal of “progress” that is fixed, dominant, and widely

shared (Dailey 1999).

Promoters of the project appealed in many ways to the public for support of the

development of the Santee-Cooper project. They viewed their hopes of what the land use would

yield in economic benefits rather than the human impact on the land. To this end, they

minimized the purported impacts of Santee Cooper on the basin landscape. Their discourse

about the project falls under one main upper-level schema with supporting lower-level schemas

within each one. The promoters employed the schema of economic progress as a strategy to

persuade people to support the project. “Progress” is the overarching, dominant schema of most

of the documents supporting the project, with sub-schemas to support this. At the level just

underneath would be the secondary schemas of industry/economic benefits to the state,

opportunity, and prosperity. Below that, at a third level, would be the schemas of employment,

cheap power, transportation, and natural resources. While less shared in the documents, another

schema is one of national defense, since the drive for the involvement of the United States in

World War II presented an urgent appeal for the completion of the project. Another separate

schema is the support of public versus private control of the Santee Cooper electric utility.

It is important to view the discourse supporting the project as the validation for the

project itself, since this discourse drove the massive mobilization for the clearing and

construction of the hydroelectric dams. This is particularly true of the role of such discourse because those who argued for the project were mostly men with the ability to influence (and in

some cases control) the course of the development of Santee Cooper by virtue of their political

and business leadership positions. All of the men who had a hand in creating the project,

securing funding for it, and writing to promote it were of the highest levels of political and

economic power in the state.

With the keyword “progress,” I initially considered the connotation would be one of

“moving forward” and looking to the future. Here, it is important to note that progress is

considered to be a sequence schema, which is “characterized by a learned and internalized

expectation of a proper sequence of steps comprising an event” (Dailey 1999:40). In other

words, in our minds, we anticipate something will happen after a prior event, and this

expectation influences our motivations and goals (D’Andrade 1992:30, Dailey 1999:40). Within

the progress schema is a shared idea that the creation of Santee Cooper would bring economic

and industrial opportunities leading to benefits for the state (or at least for the people supporting

it).

Progress, as an ideal in Western thought, is descended from the ancient Greek and Roman

era as well as from the Christian belief in moral advancement (Bury 1932[1920], Nisbet

1994[1980]). The religious notions of Providence and submitting to God’s will were gradually replaced through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with this idea of human improvement,

based in Western rationality (Nisbet 1994[1980]). Government, supplied with technology and

tax money, ushered in the modern age by creating large public works to enhance the lives of its

78 people (Nisbet 1994[1980], Norgaard 1994). Modernity is characterized by certain people’s belief that progress can alleviate social ills, improve economic conditions, and can expand into new places (Norgaard 1994). The government’s newly established roles in promoting and achieving progress through the financing and technological exploitation of the physical environment characterized the New Deal (J. S. Smith 2006). Norgaard critiques the modern notion of progress, with its rapid spread and exploitation of resources, as leading to an unsustainable world of degraded natural environments and increasing homogeneity of culture

(1994).

The story of these progressive intentions of the United States government plays a strong role in the narrative of twentieth-century environmental history. Harnessing the power of a major river for progress was a popular trend even before New Deal-era politics and planning.

Several works of environmental history have described these New Deal efforts to create large public works that altered the land and hydrology of the United States. Donald Worster’s Rivers of Empire (1985) is one such account of modernist goals on the part of the United States government to control nature; these goals become a major pattern of the state’s relationship to the environment in the twentieth century. Worster explains how the human relationship with nature shifted from a harmonious one with little impact to that of a managerial, conquering role, multiplied in force with the aid of capital and government power. The human desire to harness nature’s services through “technological dominance” occurs with water resources in particular

(Worster 1985:7). The far-reaching program of damming up the major rivers of the American

West for irrigation purposes led to a “coercive, monolithic and hierarchical system” (Worster

1985:7) that changed not only the ecological pattern of life but also the social order of the region.

Through the Bureau of Reclamation and its engineers, the United States government diverted water in the West for mainly agricultural purposes: to make an arid land productive.

The Santee Cooper experience is dissimilar because its rationale was to spur industry, not agriculture, and create immediate employment in a “swampy,” not a dry, landscape. In other words, the government sought to create industry in a mostly wet coastal plain by obliterating forests, farmland, and productive wetlands instead of trying to create more agriculturally productive land. Another distinction between Worster’s study and my own is that the American

West was largely an unpopulated landscape, while the Santee basin was a settled area of renowned historical significance as a former birthplace of plantation agriculture and a site of

American Revolutionary war skirmishes and heroes.

Any massive diversion and exploitation of water resources, in Worster’s opinion, amounts to the commodification of natural resources, whether measured in cubic feet per second or in kilowatt hours (1985:52). In this regard, the Santee Cooper project was no different. In both cases, federal administrators promoted “the accumulation of profit and power” of their infrastructure projects (Worster 1985:166) in the harnessing of water resources for economic and social purposes.

Ten years later, another environmental historian published a book on the large-scale harnessing of water resources in the American Northwest region. In his story of the Columbia

River, Richard White explains how the government dammed the river with the Bonneville and the Grand Coulee dams in accordance with progressive ideals of “more democratic control over land and resources” and better and more efficient human labor (1995:59). The harvesting of the energy of the Columbia, ostensibly for social purposes, included the primary goal of industrial growth and a secondary objective of rural electrification for Northwest farmers (White 1995:69-

70). However, the result was social disorganization and a diminished natural ecosystem that

could no longer support vital stocks of anadromous fishes, such as the wild salmon fisheries that

were essential to the economic and social organization of the Pacific Northwest. Similarly, the

Tennessee Valley Authority caused its share of social and environmental impacts when it

constructed its dam construction within a piedmont landscape (as discussed in Chapter Two).

Within the scope of this dissertation research, the actual word “progress,” employed to mean economic development (as opposed to the “progress” at work toward completing the project), was only found in seven of the documents promoting Santee Cooper. Instead, the single main keyword from the historical texts was that of “industry,” appearing in twenty-seven of the thirty-six texts. Industry in this case is linked to, and indeed inherent in, the notion of progress since the federal government imposed its capabilities, technologies, and power to execute immense public work projects to promote economic development. With such an entirely rural economy suffering the devastating hit of the Great Depression, South Carolina’s politicians and business leaders did indeed seek to spur industrial development. They viewed the industrialization of the Northern states with envy and wanted the manufacturing sector to flourish in the South. For them, the donation of tens of millions of dollars in federal money to the project was the quickest means towards this end.

Industry, Opportunity, and Prosperity

The secondary level schemas supporting the cultural ideal of progress at the highest level

of the cultural model are important because they are heavily intertwined with economics. The

three major secondary level schemas are industry, opportunity, and prosperity. Even at this sub-

level, the schemas remain culturally durable and are fairly abstract. Each of these words could

be substituted in some way for the word “economic,” but the writers employ these terms and

several rhetorical strategies to expound the benefits of Santee Cooper.

Industry and its perceived economic impacts make up the primary schema that supports

the higher-level cultural ideal of progress in the talk about Santee Cooper. In their campaign for

“industry,” the promoters endorsed the project by appealing to old-fashioned, common economic

sense. While the use of this term can be viewed as a schema of progress, it is a meaning of

progress that strongly implies materialism. This connotation is in opposition to the notion of

progress as idealist because the promoters were not promoting the broad progress of humanity but very practical, concrete economic opportunities that they could attract to the state by manufacturing cheap power.

Although industry was the single most commonly shared schema connecting the

documents, the writers used the keyword “progress” to promise a new beginning to the depressed

region. They employed the ideal of “progress” solely in terms of the economic benefits of the

project. Said McDonald, “To achieve a new progress in our South we must face realities, forego

excuses, and each of us do something that will add a little bit more to what we have” (1941:6-A).

He further stated that “enough progress” will equal “a prosperous South” occurring “in spite of

hell and highwater[sic]” (1941:6-A). The building and operation of the Santee-Cooper project

would “inaugurate a new period of diversified industrial progress,” as Governor Emile Harley

saw it (Harley 1941:12-C). Lawrence told South Carolinians that if they “are to make any

progress it will not be by accepting defeat and stagnation” (Lawrence 1939:4). The ushering in

of progress would allow the state to rise out of its moribund economy, which had been in

consistent decline since the aftermath of the Civil War.

In addition to “industry,” the notion of “opportunity” serves as a secondary schema

supporting progress. Fourteen of the documents share the idea of opportunity, a term that ties in

with the schema of progress and the theme of industry. The writers invoked the word

“opportunity” to persuade the public to believe in the beneficial impact of Santee Cooper on

South Carolina’s economy. The “new” and “vast” opportunities provided by the federal money and project had only to be “taken advantage of” by South Carolina’s people. John Carmody furthered this sentiment when he stated, “We have the opportunity to make a success for ourselves and our posterity that will more than be worth the price” (1939:4). The price of Santee

Cooper as a “forty million dollar opportunity” was considered to be “the real solution” to economic stagnation (Haws 1939:4). In his typically colorful language, McDonald stated that the “bold and smart men” could convert the Santee River into “opportunity” for the people of

South Carolina (1941:6-A). Here, he acknowledges the massive flow of the large river for providing cheap electric power. Opportunity also meant providing attractions for industry to come to South Carolina, as when Arthur DeHay, the mayor of Moncks Corner urged opportunity to relocate to the town (1941:3). In short, the Santee Cooper project would create opportunities for progress in the region.

Some politicians reprimanded South Carolinians for the loss of specific opportunities

when some industries failed to locate themselves there despite the many natural resources and

manpower available. There was much said about the “plain old-fashioned inertia” (Lawrence

1939:4) of South Carolinians in not taking advantage of their resources to produce items that

could be sold across the nation. However, these small-scale industries, such as timber and pulp, were not enough to bring value-added prosperity to South Carolina. Maybank lamented that without the Santee Cooper project and its electricity, “we would be utterly unable to do anything

other than furnish some raw materials and labor” to other parts of the nation (1941: 12C).

Bemoaned another author, “Our agriculture has gone to pot and our people are improverished

[sic]. Industrialism is our only salvation” (Haws 1939:4). Here, several writers promoted Santee

Cooper as a way to employ the rural landscape for industrial purposes and thus save the regional

population from dire poverty.

In a statement that seems prescient in the globalized economy of today, McDonald

complained that in South Carolina, businesses fail since much of the capital in the state is used to

solicit “outsiders to exploit our heritage for tidbits of local employment” (1941:6-A). The Santee

Cooper project, although funded with federal money, would help South Carolina’s sluggish

economy gain a foothold with which to pull itself out of its depressed condition. To this end,

Santee Cooper engineer Frederick McDonald considered the potential project to be a

metaphorical “giant in harness”:

In our Santee-Cooper project is slumbering an economic giant. It can be left to sleep; or, it can be put to work to help not only the low country but all the state to revitalize our lagging progress. We who are placing this giant in harness can help you to utilize its every advantage. We are ready. But only you, the people of the state, can apply the benefits of Santee-Cooper to the making of that personal profit from which, alone, can come the general prosperity to South Carolina (1941:6-A).

With this statement, Frederick McDonald encapsulated the views that progress and economic benefit will come to the state through a single hydroelectric project.

Former governor Maybank summed up the hopes of the promoters in an article

celebrating the establishment of an “Industrialization Period” for South Carolina, where he

proclaimed that the state “is on its way to increased industrialization, more diversied [sic] and

profitable farming, [and] a greater proportion of skilled labor” to result in “a very materially

increased per capital[sic] income for the state” (Maybank 1941: 12-C). In the words of Governor

J. Emile Harley, Santee Cooper was “sorely needed to balance our state’s economy for the present and future” (Harley 1941:12-C). Many authors referenced South Carolina’s abundance of “man power” and “cheap labor” as part of the state’s natural resources that could draw industry. Much of the talk of industry centered on the exploitation of the state’s natural resources as the means to draw manufacturing to “found a new empire for basic industries”

(McDonald 1941:6-A). These men were proud of the natural resources of the state: its water resources, vegetation, and the mild climate. The many attractions of the area persuaded the mayor of Moncks Corner to write,

With our location right at the seat of cheap power, with numerous sites for factories available, with the main line of the A. C. L. passing through town, with the Santee Canal furnishing water transportation, with hard-surfaced roads loading North and South and out towards Columbia, with our excellent school facilities . . . climate . . . there is no reason why industry should not seize the opportunity to locate here (DeHay 1941: 3).

Federal administrator John Carmody, because of the natural resources in the state, thought the promised industrial expansion could be of a local and “a ‘grass-roots’ kind” and that it “should be, by and large, a ‘home grown’ development” (1939: 4).

Using this subschema of industry, the writers describe several types of industry that account for sub-level schemas. These separate industries serve as the “fill-in” slots for the lower-level schemas of the cultural model since they are concrete, objective phenomena, based in experiential reality, upon which the higher levels are built. These industries include the timber industry, agriculture, textiles, and the steel industry.

Seven promoters of Santee Cooper declared that they wanted to develop better the pulp, paper, and timber industries in the area with the building of the project. H. A. Smith, a former

State Forester, describes the current lumber industry, “carried on by the more or less itinerant

sawmills,” as being poorly equipped and poorly financed and not practicing adequate

conservation and stewardship for future generations. He envisioned electric-powered permanent

mills and better forest conservation practices (Smith 1941:16-A). The future lumber industry, spurred by the availability of cheap electricity, would produce wood, plywood, and the byproducts for a growing and profitable paper industry.

A second industrial improvement expected by six of the authors as a result of Santee

Cooper was in farming; this anticipated improvement was described as an “opportunity” to

develop “an industrial program to help balance our agricultural endeavors” (Brailsford 1941:1).

In short, the leaders of the state were frustrated with a stagnating and deteriorating agriculture, so

they linked the needs of agriculture with those of industry. According to John Carmody, farmers

would benefit from improved and diversified markets for farm products (1939:10). In a letter to

Senator James Byrnes, a local grocer from Charleston stated that the farmers would use the

electricity to both harvest and preserve such products as vegetables, poultry, eggs, hogs, and

milk. “Farming[,] instead of being a drudgery and burden to the State[,] will be a profitable industry” (Pearlstine 1933:1). A few promoters also mentioned the desired ability to expand and

support the state’s nascent textile industry upon the advent of inexpensive power. Lastly, a few

writers expressed their hope of outside companies establishing steel plants in Charleston.

Although inextricably linked with the issue of industrial development for the largely rural

state of South Carolina, the condition of the economy in a broader sense deeply concerned those

who sought to promote the project and serves as a secondary-level schema supporting the notion

of progress. The writers define these economic concerns in terms of general prosperity,

strengthened commerce, increased income for the state, and an improvement in the quality of life

of its citizens. In fact, the federal Public Works administrator, Clark Foreman, claimed that the

chief advantage of the Santee-Cooper project was to boost the income of South Carolina’s people

(1939:4). In an early plea to the legislature to authorize the project, George Fishburne asserted that “the economic progress of this State [. . . ] and maintenance of a decent standard of living of its people, are all directly dependent upon the development of this project” (1934:1). Charles

Gerald, secretary for the Authority, declared that Santee Cooper would “change the geographical face of the state, and its economic setup” (1939:8-iv). Thanks to their income-raising assertions, the promoters appear altruistic in fighting for the proposed development.

Business owners forecasted hefty profits as a result of the proposed project. The

promoters expected that the promise of over $40,000,000 in federal money would have an

immediate impact on local and state-level markets. To emphasize this point, PWA Chief

Engineer Kenneth Markwell plainly stated, “All business will receive a direct or indirect benefit”

from Santee Cooper (1938:2). Profiteers also anticipated a great increase in purchasing power

for local businesses. Attempting to quell criticism, businessman Edwin Poulnot decried the

frequent antagonism of William Watts Ball, editor of Charleston’s The News and Courier,

toward Santee Cooper, stating that the business interests in the state would “best [be] served by

having no more critical editorials with regard to this project” (Poulnot 1939:1). In many of his

editorials, Mr. Ball vacillated on Santee Cooper, lambasting the government for its waste and

land condemnation tactics but appreciatively acknowledging the increase in his subscription

base. Conservative Thomas Waring, the editor of The Charleston Evening Post, also reluctantly

approved the project with this statement:

It is inconceivable that such a substantial sum of money could be injected into the trade channels in the Charleston territory without bringing about improved conditions, and certainly the prospects for the next three or four years are brighter because of it (Waring 1938:4).

Further, the expansion of industries in the state would enhance the general business climate, since “these industries pay wages and plenty of pay envelopes bring about a healthy business condition” (Fass 1938:4). The promoters anticipated better times for all, knowing that an enhanced commercial environment would fatten their wallets and provide them with additional capital.

The notion of “prosperity” is linked with economics and opportunity to form another second-level schema supporting the cultural model of progress. The writers used economic

“prosperity” as a shared keyword to describe the desired outcome of the massive federally- funded hydroelectric project. In a speech, John Carmody invoked this term several times to explain how the nation is economically interdependent:

Bitter experience has taught us that prosperity in one part of the country is short-lived if depression impoverishes the rest of the country. More than ever before in our history, we have come to realize that the various regions of the United States are interdependent and vitally bound together. To be prosperous as a nation, we must have prosperity everywhere. We cannot have a rich East, a poor South and a foreclosed West. One section will not long remain rich if others are bankrupt (1939:5).

The use of nationalist rhetoric for federal administrator Carmody was a device to win over hearts and minds by stirring up American pride and fondness for history. With completion of the project, David Fass predicted “prosperity and happiness to farmers, labor, and business”

(1938:4). For a prominent Charleston politician, the project was the “key to the future prosperity” of Charleston (VonDohlen 1941:6-C). The project’s many far-reaching benefits would bring “new life and new prosperity” to the entire state as well (Lawrence 1939:8). South

Carolina could look to a brighter future with “prosperity” on the horizon.

This schema of prosperity can also be viewed as a quality of life issue, since the promoters called on citizens of South Carolina to imagine their lives becoming better. Carmody

88 explained simply, “This project will make possible a great improvement in the everyday life of the people of this State” (1939:9). By raising wage levels, Santee Cooper jobs would also raise the standard of living, lessen household drudgery, and save human lives. For Hart, the purpose of Santee Cooper was to “benefit all the people of South Carolina” and to improve their “health, wealth, and material prosperity” (Hart 1941:1). The condition of prosperity is an anticipated result of progress.

Electricity, Employment, and Transportation

A third level of the cultural model demonstrates the greater specificity of real-life phenomena that are more concrete and less abstract than the higher-level schemas it supports.

These tertiary level sub-schemas are cheap electricity, employment, and transportation, all widely touted benefits of Santee Cooper. They serve to uphold the driving model of progress by demonstrating the means through which Santee Cooper would help the region industrialize with better infrastructure and employment, two main pillars of the New Deal.

The writers acknowledged the greater availability and spread of electricity as alleged benefits of Santee Cooper, expressing their excitement that cheap power from Santee Cooper would spur economic and industrial growth. Cheap power thus serves as another tertiary level sub-schema in the cultural model of the promoters. Inexpensive electricity was hailed as the

“powerful impetus to industrial development” since manufacturers “naturally seek out cheap sources of power” in deciding where to locate (Carmody 1939:9). A bottom-line approach for these writers was simply that cheap power attracts industry. According to Markwell, cheap power would also allow existing businesses to increase their profits (1938:2). The authors viewed the state’s largest river system as a source for energy and electricity. They regarded

hydroelectric power as a cheaper source than the standard coal-based steam plants, especially since the massive flow of the Santee River would provide the work by churning through several

massive turbines. Fass gleefully stated that the “large output and extremely low price” of the

predicted annual output of 700,000,000 KWH would produce an “immense inflow of industries

which will cause the most conservative to wonder with amazement” (1938:4). Other promoters

compared the project to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), where cheap electricity attracted

industries to the region there. The celebrated economic benefits of the Tennessee project led to

the TVA’s barely keeping up with the new energy demands of nearby cities, alleged one federal

administrator (Foreman 1939:4). Kenneth Markwell claimed that he was “astounded” at the

staggering increase in the consumption of electricity after the rates were lowered for TVA customers. He cites a boost in average domestic consumption in the Tennessee Valley that shot up fivefold over three years (1938:2).

But just how cheap would the power be? Frederick McDonald, development engineer for

Santee Cooper, boasted in 1941 that energy rates would be less than half a cent per kilowatt

hour, an amount forty percent lower than the average prevailing at that time in the state (1941:6-

A). The savings would not only benefit businesses and industries but farmers and residential

consumers as well.

While the promoters exhorted South Carolinians to believe in the benefits of cheap

electricity for drawing industry to the state, the expansion of electricity in this mostly rural area

was another advantage. Regarded in the rhetoric as a natural resource, the “abundant energy” to be produced by hydroelectricity could be transmitted by new power lines into underserved rural areas. Six of the documents mention the expansion of electricity in rural areas. Said George

Fishburne in 1934, “Without [Santee Cooper] the whole rural electrification program of this

State can never be fully carried out” (1934:4), a sentiment echoed by James F. Byrnes in his

letter to Department of the Interior Secretary Harold Ickes (1934:1). Such a program would help

develop the rural sections of the state (Whitsett 1933) and farmers would benefit from it too.

Chairman Maybank of the South Carolina Public Service Authority publicized the numbers in

this statement:

As an instance of how our needs for electric power are growing, take, for instance, rural electrification in the state. As of July 1, 1941 there were 14,640 miles of rural distribution lines and 66,240 customers. Just one year earlier, on July 1, 1940, the total mileage of rural lines amounted to 10,893 and there were 54,905 customers. Almost 4,000 miles and 12,000 customers were added in this one year. That growth speaks for itself (Maybank 1941:12- C).

The politicians of the state pledged to keep expanding the program of rural electrification.

Representing the federal government, John Carmody touted the benefits of the Rural

Electrification Administration, by which rural residents could “secure the advantages that will

accrue from cheap power” (Carmody 1939:10). The rural electrification promises of the New

Deal could be carried out with hydropower and new transmission lines, forming connected grids

for potential economic activity over the state’s landscape.

Another tertiary schema in the cultural model of progress was the promise of jobs and

employment. The writers were thrilled that not only would the federal government provide jobs

directly, but indirect economic growth in the area would also spur job growth. Promoters hailed this assurance of wage employment, a theme found in fourteen of the documents, as much for the reduction of unemployment as for the perceived benefits of wage earners advancing the economic climate in South Carolina through a boost in purchasing power. The jobs would provide livelihoods for men and their families, many of whom were barely making ends meet, especially in isolated rural areas.

The Great Depression had decimated employment levels across the nation. One of the

missions of the New Deal’s Public Works Administration was to provide jobs on a national scale

by allotting federal funds for “sound and desirable projects”; these projects would stimulate

construction to boost employment “not only on the site of the project, but also in manufacturing

plants, mines factories and transportation” (Markwell 1938:2). Appealing to the national pride

of South Carolinians, PWA administrator Carmody spoke of the general value of employment:

“Those who have experienced unemployment will readily understand how employment in itself

toughens the fibre[sic] of the country” and promised employment to “thousands of men” which

will “contribute to the security of our national economy” (1939:6). In urging the moral resolve

of the people, engineer McDonald argued that able-bodied men of valor were needed to convert

their jobs into purchasing power by spending their PWA-sponsored wages (McDonald 1941:6-

A). The project would not only provide much-needed jobs but would also boost consumer

purchasing power and thus support local businesses, improving the depressed state.

The partnership of federal and state governments was important for promoting job

creation. To demonstrate the commitment of the South Carolina legislature in working to bring

jobs to men from all across the state, Charles Gerald quoted the Act creating the South Carolina

Public Service Authority: “As far as may be practicable the labor to be employed on the

development . . . shall be resident South Carolina workmen, and the same shall be allocated to

each county in the state ratably [sic] as the need for employment may exist” (Gerald 1939:8-iv).

While selecting members to make up the board of the South Carolina Public Service Authority,

Governor Johnston gave credit to President Roosevelt for bringing jobs to thousands of

unemployed South Carolinians (1938:1). Quantitatively, Markwell estimated that Santee Cooper would provide “10,000 man-years of employment” for which about 5,000 men would work on

the construction of the dam and an additional 5,000 men would labor for the Works Progress

Administration clearing the basins for inundation (1938:2).

For the section of South Carolina involved in the Santee Cooper project, the effect of the employment was immediate and clear. After the clearing and construction began, the mayor of

Orangeburg, J. M. Brailsford, noted that the Santee Cooper had greatly reduced the unemployment rolls in his area (1941:1). One anonymous employee of Santee Cooper was so happy to have a job that he wrote about it in a letter to the editor of The News and Courier,

defending the development from critics by maintaining how it kept youth and talent in the state

with the availability of jobs and “the means with which to live” (An Employe[sic] 1939:4).

Another noted that the wages were higher than had been seen previously in that section of South

Carolina (Nelson 1941:1). Further, indirect employment spurred by Santee Cooper included jobs

in the new local industries of manufacturing, transportation, and mines and “[gave] ample

evidence to the success” of the New Deal policies (Gilmore 1941:13-C).

Later on, as the project construction proceeded, the employment available in the region

encouraged the growth of towns surrounding the project area. Several local mayors commented

on this phenomenon. Mayor Hart of Holly Hill said that Santee Cooper increased the local

population and stimulated business growth in his town (1941:1). Further, the need for housing started a building boom of newly constructed homes that led to a rise in real estate values for the

town (1941:1). Mayor DeHay of Moncks Corner, the town nearest the construction of the

Pinopolis power house and dam, marveled at the bustling activity brought by the Santee Cooper development:

Those familiar with our little town a few years ago would hardly know it now. Then Main Street had a run-down appearance. Now new stores have gone up and old ones have been

renovated . . . There is scarcely a business which is not taxed to the capacity of its force to care for the trade . . . Once it was only on Saturday afternoons and perhaps sales days and Mondays of court week that our streets were crowded. Now . . . our town presents a scene of activity not often witnessed even in larger cities. And the people are not idlers (1941:2).

DeHay expressed the wish that many of the people would remain in Moncks Corner and become

permanent residents (1941:3). Mayor Nelson of Elloree reported simply that “a good bit of”

money was being spent in his town (1941:1). The jobs available brought people from all over

the state to work and for some, to settle in the area and contribute to the towns’ economic and

population growth.

Supporting the upper-level schemas of progress and economic development, several

writers hyped the transportation features of the proposed “Hydroelectric and Navigation Project,”

as it was officially called. Navigation and increased transportation opportunities supported the

New Deal’s national efforts to improve the nation’s infrastructure. Ironically, the purported commercial transportation advantages of the Santee-Cooper project never materialized. The claim of navigation was so important early on that it appears as the first item in the Act creating the Santee Cooper project. Written by the South Carolina legislature, the act stated that the purpose of the project is to “provide navigation facilities from Charleston to the interior of the state and to make available for the development of the state and its resources hydro-electric energy, from the Santee River, thus adding greatly to the wealth of the state” (1934:1). The

“revival” of the navigation feature of this project harkens back to the Old Santee Canal, which had been created in the late eighteenth century. Navigation was promised from Charleston all the way to Columbia with a 145-mile navigation channel that would reduce freight costs for the transport of goods in the state (Gerald 1939:8-iv). Cheaper transportation options were acclaimed as a boon to the local economy. As J. M. Whitsitt, President of the Carolina Shipping

Company, wrote to Senator Byrnes, “I know of no project more vital to the State as a whole than the construction of this waterway” (1933:1). One business owner testified, “To make the Santee river navigable would relieve the embarrassment which now confronts the largest cities of the state” (Pearlstine 1933:1). Hanahan, another businessman, was thrilled that shallow water vessels could travel waters to central South Carolina and that the project would establish access to the “waterway to the markets of the world as well as to our own markets” (1941:14).

Congressman McMillan of the Sixth District in South Carolina was excited that the project would facilitate the transportation of farm crops around the state (McMillan 1941:6-D). Many thought the proposed benefits of navigation would be a boon to commercial shipping of goods from the port of Charleston into Columbia and back.

In the original plan, railroad traffic would be interrupted in favor of the waterway, since the Santee Cooper project called for a new bridge with a lift span over the tail canal to accommodate a main double track line of the Atlantic Coast Line railroad. In addition, a new bridge was to be built across the canal to continue United States Highway Route 52 even though highway traffic would not be interrupted by water traffic on the canal (Harza 1941:15-C).

Moncks Corner mayor Arthur DeHay was excited about the prospects that would be brought by this confluence of transportation options for his town. With the railroad, the water transportation, and the paved roads nearby, he stated, industry should find it advantageous to locate near Moncks Corner (1941:3).

The other remarkable navigational aspect of the project was the seventy-five-foot single- lift lock that would be built into the Pinopolis dam, the largest of its kind in the United States at the time. Boats would enter the lock and be lowered or raised by seventy-five feet in a single lift. Engineering contractor Harza noted that the measurements of this engineering feat would be

sixty feet by 180 feet (1941:15-C). Again employing national defense in his promotion of the

federal project, Carmody said that “highways and transportation facilities of all sorts strengthen

our country” (1939:3). The promoters were excited about the amazing man-made feats of engineering – the proposed dams, lock, powerhouse, and canals – that would change the landscape into one that promised economic benefits in addition to supporting the growth and strength of the national infrastructure.

Natural Resources

As a last tertiary level schema, a few of the promoters acclaimed South Carolina’s natural

resources in their support of the Santee Cooper project. This was most mentioned as a draw for

industry, as I explain in the above section on economics and industry. I include this discussion

of natural resources as a separate section because I am interested in how these authors invoked

the environment and how, ironically, they sought to alter that environment and its resources

irrevocably. They speak about the environment in terms of resources for exploitation and

consumption. The main subject is the project’s water resources, that is, the Santee River. A

hydro development “would be utilizing one of the few remaining natural resources of the State”

(Whitsitt 1933:5-6), making use of an “inexhaustible supply of water” (Hanahan 1941:14).

“Converting the yellow waters of the Santee River into trickles of gold” (McDonald 1941:6-A)

was a colorful way to illustrate this viewpoint. In the words of contractor and engineer L. F.

Harza, the lake would be restricted to the area of the immense Santee swamp (Harza 1941:15-C).

John Carmody linked the use of natural resources to national security in claiming that the

“harnessing of our natural resources” to generate electrical power “is a necessary part of this internal strengthening” (1939:4). The hydrology of the region would be turned into a measurable

96 economic resource. The promoters discounted the wetlands’ impact on providing ecological benefits in the form of breeding grounds, natural erosion and flood control, and productive deltas and barrier islands.

As for other natural resources, several writers praise the climate and vegetation, as in a statement by Babcock, the former president of the South Carolina State Fish and Game

Association. He described “the diversity and luxuriance of vegetation” as providing “an almost inexhaustible food supply” (1939:20). Babcock also mentioned the “benevolent climate”

(1939:20), and Carmody praised the “abundant sunshine” of the state (1939:6). They noted that the forest resources of the state, especially rich in the region because of the unique bottomland hardwoods, provide a needed source of income for the state in the growing industries of lumber, pulp, and paper mills.

A few of the promoters recognized the effect that Santee Cooper would have on the environment. Forester Smith acknowledged the impact of “completely chang[ing] the multiple uses of 166,000 acres of land” and converting that into a single use: the generation of electric power (Smith 1941:16-A). The result would displace the “farms, game preserves and forests of the past” (Smith 1941:16-A). Santee Cooper advocates justified this impact, however, by assigning a greater value to the project’s benefits in economics and quality of life than to the local ecology.

One report by engineering surveyors Murray and Flood discounted the natural and ecological resources of the region. The report said the area lacked anything of human or economic importance and therefore could be flooded without damaging much. It was printed in

The News and Courier on May 28, 1938. The article, “No Town Doomed by Santee-Cooper” reads, “The lands involved in the project do not contain any towns or villages, railroads or hard

surfaced highways, and generally contain but very little high grade land suitable to agricultural

purposes” (1938:12). The engineers also describe the land as mostly swamp with stands of timber (The News and Courier 1938a:12). This engineering report, sought by the PWA as an assessment in their preliminary planning, helped to set up the destruction of the natural resources of the Santee basin lands.

Because of the prominence of the conservation of natural resources as a political issue,

some politicians argued in the press that Santee Cooper could entail a program of conservation.

In a somewhat confusing argument that demonstrates the conflicting ideals of conservation and economic growth, State Forester H. A. Smith stated:

Fundamentally the goal of all conservation is stability -- stability of industry, of employment, of homes, and of recreation. Stability is to be obtained only through continuity of production of raw materials. Thus the conservation of water resources and their utilization for the production of power without detracting from other natural resources can well be considered fundamental in the program of conservation (1941:16-A).

Here, conservation is linked to providing industry and commerce with the means of continuing

production, even though the very means of producing power is destroying the forests and

creating erosion problems. This idea of “modern” conservation allows for large infrastructure

projects to coexist with the “design of a bountiful nature remodeled to fit the pattern of a

changing world” (Kauffman 1939:12). This twentieth-century notion of conservation conflates

human values of economic prosperity and the ecological balance of forests and wildlife

(Kauffman 1939:6). Specifically, a problem of conservation posed by the American Forestry

Association was whether or not the timber taken out of the basin in the clearing for Santee

Cooper could be adequately logged and milled (1939). With this view, human progress through

economic improvements takes an even footing with ecological stability. Conservation in this

view means the continued harvesting of raw materials as a major source of income for a state

that relies heavily on agriculture and timber.

The siltation of the lakes was a particular problem foreseen by Smith (1941) and

Babcock. Babcock advocated erosion control when he argued, “Silt pollution is like death and taxes; always to be reckoned with” (1938:21). Smith urged educating the public on the wise management of woodlands while considering the ecological importance of forests and fields

(1941:16-A). Wildlife was another issue that only three promoters articulated. Richardson argued that in the face of criticism from people who said Santee Cooper would destroy wildlife, people would find great opportunities to enjoy wildlife in the newly created lakes (Richardson

1942:3). Here, the promoters of Santee Cooper are counting on the basin area’s natural beauty and wildlife to provide benefits to the region.

One professed aim of Santee Cooper from its early days was to protect and promote

wildlife through “scientific management.” At that time, large government infrastructure projects

were not at odds with the ideal of conservation, which combined “the delicate values and

balances of timber, wildlife, and man prospering together” (Kauffman 1939). The government

sought to provide a refuge for waterfowl by introducing aquatic plants to grow in the lakes as

food. They also established two large ponds for keeping the lake stocked with fish, both for

wildlife and game purposes (The News and Courier 1941v:A-13). In addition, the government

planned to create a wildlife management area to attract both game and hunters.

Recreational opportunities to be developed by the newly created lakes were also linked to

the issue of natural resources and their conservation. Although only four of the promoters

mentioned it, any author who forecasted the recreational benefits of Santee Cooper before 1942

was prophetic indeed, as recreation has been the single largest and lasting legacy of the lakes

created by the damming of the Santee River. Babcock, the former head of the South Carolina

State Fish and Game Association, put forth this statement stating how hydroelectric power can be a boon to fishermen:

The kilowatt promises to become the fisherman’s friend. Electricity is performing yeoman service in the interest of fish propagation in many parts of the country. Water power is waxing like Jonah’s gourd. Financed by corporate millions, state agencies, or some alphabetical instrumentality of the government, mammoth reservoirs are filling up . . . . Here is a tremendous body of fresh water with thousands of miles of shoreline, a lock-and-key job with all taxes and maintenance costs paid by somebody else, and situated in a section of unsurpassed natural advantages, that offers itself scot-free to the sportsman (Babcock 1938:20).

While promoting fishing, Babcock is also demonstrating that South Carolinians who love to fish

have the generation of electrical power and artificial lakes, paid for by the federal government, to

thank. Richardson predicted that the lakes would bring opportunities for “splendid waterfowl

hunting and fishing equal to any in the nation” (Richardson 1942:3). The lakes would bring the

sport of hunting game birds “within means of the average hunter instead of preserving it as a

monopoly of the few,” an added bonus for Babcock (Babcock 1938:21). Forester Smith gushed

over the new park to be built along the Santee reservoir, a proposed area of 2,000 acres equipped

to provide fishing, boating, swimming, picnicking, nature trails, and museums. (Smith 1941:16-

A). For Mayor DeHay of Moncks Corner, Lake Moultrie would provide a “playground” with

wide, sandy shores, safer “waves,” and lots of fishing to attract tourists (1941:3).

The few who predicted the results of fishing, boating, and bathing on the lakes were in

some ways poised to take advantage of these little-known benefits. It was indeed the creation of

Santee Cooper that caused this sector of the region’s economy to blossom. The landscape, once

transformed, would attract a new type of tourist interested in the new features of the landscape,

though not the same wooded wilderness retreat of the past.

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Outside or Inside the Main Model: Two Political Schemas

The promoters invoked two main political schemas to support Santee Cooper. Although

these seem to be outside the cultural model of progress, I will demonstrate how these schemas actually support the model. The first is the notion of defense, while the second is the public versus private utility debate. In both cases, the promoters employed these schemas using rhetorical strategies to support the Santee Cooper project, but these schemas also served to uphold the cultural model of progress.

The schema of defense from the documents supporting Santee Cooper is linked to a

separate secondary-level schema that would appear to be outside of the main cultural model of economic progress because the notion of defense is linked to a higher-level cultural schema of patriotism. This use of the higher-level schema came about later in the project, around 1941, as the United States was preparing for entry into World War II. The defense schema serves to support the main schema of economic progress in the cultural model of the Santee Cooper landscape by promoting the growing war industries of Charleston.

There is yet another way to look at the big picture. Since the preparations for Santee

Cooper were well underway at the time when it seemed most obvious that the United States

would become involved in World War II, the promotion of the Santee Cooper for national

defense can be seen as a rhetorical device to garner more support for the project, appealing in

part to a sense of urgency for the project’s completion to help the war industry. In addition, the

writer could combine several goals at once -- invoking a South Carolinian’s patriotism so he

supported both the war effort and the Santee Cooper project. The writers tied the notion of

defense to the idea of economic progress and industry in a number of additional ways.

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The concern for national defense developed in the late 1930s as headlines each day

alerted the country to attacks made by the Germans and Japanese, often detailing the bombing

and devastation on such countries as Great Britain and France. Soon it became clear that the

promoters could argue for the Santee Cooper project for national security reasons. With its

proximity to the port in Charleston, Santee Cooper power could help the manufacture of war

materials by providing a source of nearby cheap hydroelectric power. From the Charleston base, the Navy could send its vessels to help the Allies. The national mindset was one of preparing the

United States for an imminent entry into the war, since the presence of a foreign war “makes it important for us to re-double our efforts to make democracy work” (Carmody 1939:3). A theme found in thirteen of the texts, defense became an important issue that increased the project’s urgency, since Santee-Cooper could supply “much needed defense power” for war preparations

(Frain 1942:4).

PWA Administrator John Carmody was perhaps the most successful at combining high-

level cultural schemas to enact the goals of his administration. His job depended on it. He gave

a widely circulated speech, heard over radio and published in the daily newspapers, to the people of South Carolina. With his penchant for rhetoric, Carmody again appealed to the patriotic identity of South Carolinians to support the project and the war effort:

If we have a single “cause” in America, it is democracy. Our forefathers were strong in their conviction that democracy makes possible the best sort of life. Free people all over the world look to this nation for proof that democracy can survive and succeed. We alone, of all the nations in the world, are big enough, strong enough behind natural boundaries, and rich enough so that physically we have the opportunity to stand out as a beacon of liberty in a war-torn world. Our place in history will depend on our ability to put our own house in order. To do this, we must get beyond theory. We must show real accomplishment (Carmody 1939:2).

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In this statement, Carmody promoted Santee-Cooper as a means of fostering democracy and

strengthening the United States from within through infrastructure development. It is important

to note that he appealed to higher-level cultural schemas in reminding people of such patriotic ideals as “conviction,” “democracy,” and “beacon of liberty.” Carmody used these rhetorical strategies with great effect to combine economic development with the war effort.

There are other ways in which the issue of national defense is tied to economic progress.

Maybank noted that, as governor, he initiated and stimulated activity in the state that “marshalled

vast defense forces” in the region to turn it into an active military industrial center (1941:12-C).

He referred to the growth of the Charleston Naval Yard, which received millions in defense

money to build destroyers and war vessels, providing jobs and almost 3,000 new housing units

(Maybank 1941:12-C). He wanted South Carolina and particularly the Lowcountry region of the

state “to do its [s]hare in the defense effort” (Maybank 1941:12-C). Maybank and others

supported the idea that Santee Cooper was vital for the nation’s defense.

The issue of defense also gave credence to the argument supporting industrial

development in the region. Emile Harley suggested that “human freedom the world over” relies

on American industrial production (1941:12-C). Furthermore, the promoters looked forward to

the post-war condition in which the industries would still be in operation and remain a strong part of the “new” South Carolina economy (VonDohlen 1941:6-C). They counted on industries spurred by preparations for war to continue after it was over.

Even local businessmen professed excitement about Santee-Cooper’s potential

contribution to the war effort. J. Ross Hanahan, President of Planters Fertilizer and Phosphate

Company in Charleston, was excited that South Carolina had a chance to “add our share to the

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needs of our country” by providing electric power, manufacturing defense materials, and making the port of Charleston available to the United States military and its allies (Hanahan 1941:14).

Not only did the defense spending and production alter the course of the completion of

the project, it also sped up its timetable mightily. Dr. William Jacobs, Chairman of the South

Carolina Council for National Defense, promised that the state council “will do everything

possible to speed completion of the Santee-Cooper development” because of its role as a “great

and necessary national defense program” (Jacobs 1941:1). William Knudson, Director General

of the Office of Production Management, emphasized this rush to finish in an official letter to

John Carmody, PWA Administrator:

In view of [. . . ] the desire to expedite as much as possible the production of [. . . ] defense needs, I wish to advise you that the Office of Production Management considers the Santee-Cooper hydro-electric project to be a necessity to the national defense (1941:1).

This above statement immediately and compellingly shifted the Santee Cooper hydroelectric

development to a project of national security, resulting in an earlier completion date and the

abandonment of plans to deforest the upper lake. The defense industries cited by Knudson that

required Santee Cooper power as soon as possible included an aluminum plant requiring 30,000 kilowatts of electricity, a ferrous alloy plant, and the “Commonwealth & Southern System” that

needed 50,000 kilowatts from Santee Cooper (Knudson 1941:1). Knudson closes his letter to

Carmody with, “We trust you will use every effort to have the Santee-Cooper project completed

at the earliest feasible date” (Knudson 1941:1). With the urgency of the inexorable drive toward

American participation in World War II, Santee Cooper gained new momentum and purpose, a

reformulated raison d’etre, according to many of its promoters. Whether the writers employed

the notion of defense and its associated ideal of patriotism, or whether they were just using these

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appeals for rhetorical purposes, these schemas remained urgent and effective means of

promoting the Santee Cooper development.

The other political schema was the promotion of Santee Cooper as a public utility. Here,

it is worth noting that the authors of the documents supporting public power were mostly government employees themselves. They viewed their functions as public servants in a far- reaching sense commensurate with the expanded role of the New Deal role government in creating large infrastructure projects. Financially speaking, the government generally had more money during the Depression to establish these huge power projects than did most private interests, particularly those companies with close ties to South Carolina. Thus, the promoters’ support of the public ownership and operation of Santee Cooper was crucial to obtaining the money to make it happen.

The expansion in government control of construction and management of large electrical

utilities had developed only in the first part of the twentieth century. Even though the Army

Corps of Engineers viewed the Muscle Shoals Falls in northern Alabama as a site of great

potential for providing electricity, as late as the 1890s the government did not believe it had the

constitutional right to develop the Tennessee watershed (1983:5). In 1918, however, President

Woodrow Wilson signed the authorization for the federal construction of the Wilson Dam at

Muscle Shoals for power, navigation, and nitrate fertilizer production. While President Hoover

opposed this “federal intrusion in the [Tennessee] Valley” during his term, President Roosevelt

believed the federal government was within its rights to develop public power and backed

Senator Norris’ efforts to widen the scope of the original Muscle Shoals project (Conkin

1983:20-21). Thus the TVA’s regional planning, sponsored by the federal government, won over private interests early in the Depression era.

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Political disputes are always associated with any large-scale power project, especially expensive ones. The Santee Cooper project, with an anticipated governmental cost of over forty million dollars, was no exception. In the documents promoting the development, the issue of ownership was a major political debate of the project. Santee Cooper faced the same issue as the

TVA: whether the development should be built with government money and remain a public utility, or whether private interests should undertake the project and be given the opportunity to capitalize on the development. Public aid for power found many political supporters in South

Carolina as well as in Washington, D.C. South Carolina State Senator R. M. Jefferies urged quick federal aid for the project in a letter to United States Senator Byrnes in which he wrote,

“There is every reason for speed on this matter” (1934:1). Byrnes fought hard in Washington to bring the Santee Cooper project to fruition by using his connections in the executive and legislative branches.

Both Republicans and several large utility companies opposed the development on the grounds that a government entity should not have the right to build such a large project. Even though the corporate interests also wanted to structure the Santee basin landscape for their profit, supporters as well as detractors knew that the project was too large and expensive to be funded by private capital. The opposing sides clashed in an acrimonious legal battle that delayed the project’s commencement for many years until in 1938 private interests lost their appeal in the high courts. Federal Public Works Administrator John Carmody, cautioning against the “selfish obstacles” set up by the power companies, detailed the PWA’s fight against private utilities, such as in the case of the TVA. He said it is “no namby-pamby business” and that the private companies believe they are in competition with any public power project. “They don’t want to see your State Authority sell cheap power,” he said. “That’s the heart of it” (Carmody 1939:7).

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Another writer took bitter offense to a letter that characterized the federal government and its far-

reaching New Deal programs as a huge octopus, arguing:

Your “empire of octopus” charge is certainly ridiculous when you, with your intimate acquaintance with the big power boys, know that if Santee-Cooper should acquire those properties it would only result in clipping off one of the smaller tentacles of a tremendous Wall Street holding company octopus so that the public streams they now control could be returned to and made to work for the people from which they were taken (Frain 1942:4).

With this statement Frain is claiming the government’s reach into the profitable utility industry is

not dissimilar to that of the large corporations that control the means to capital and utilities in the country.

Other promoters claimed that from the outset Santee Cooper was designed to be a

publicly-owned utility that ought to “operate in the public interest” (McDonald 1941:6-A).

Whitsitt agreed with this point of view, noting that the hydroelectric project “should not be given

away to private interests. Instead, it should be utilized for the benefit of the general public”

(1933:6). Federal administrator Foreman criticized an editorial against the government’s

ownership of the scheme by arguing, “[T]he public is capable of developing power with its own

funds for its own benefit. [This] benefit should flow to all the public, corporations as well as

individuals” (1939:4). Carmody employed an historical trope to remind people that George

Washington himself had great interest in the old Santee Canal and demonstrated that President

Roosevelt was following in this founding father’s tradition (1939:1). The New Deal supporters

believed in the power of public works to improve both the nation’s infrastructure and the quality

of life of the citizens of the United States.

It was the opinion of these Santee Cooper advocates that private companies would not

extend lines to the rural areas of the state, instead favoring transmission to industries, even those

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located out of state. Santee Cooper, however, would lower its rates for “the greatest number of

small users over the widest area” (McDonald 1941:6-A). One writer invoked the example of

Lake Murray, a corporate utility just outside of Columbia, as an example of how the private ownership of an electricity-generating project usurps the benefits for profit. Because the

hydroelectric facility at Lake Murray is privately operated, David Fass argued, the power plant

did not attract any new industry to the state. Instead, he stated, all of the electricity produced at

the Lake Murray dam is “sold to the Broad River Power company” which resells the electricity at

a premium (Fass 1938:4). In his opinion, the private company takes advantage of the ordinary

consumer of electricity. Fass found that the benefits the region could be gaining are going

elsewhere, and the private holding of power neither contributes to the local economy through

expanded transmission of electrical lines, nor to an increase in employment or local industry.

Others praised the federal government’s assistance in raising the South out of poverty.

Colonel M. E. Gilmore lauded Santee Cooper for demonstrating that “public works projects can play an important part in the economic welfare of the country” (1941:13-C). He further linked employment opportunities offered to South Carolinians to the project: “At a time when private industry had no jobs to give,” Santee Cooper would provide work for thousands of men in the state (1941:13-C). While the federal government was willing to give away the money and provide the employment on its payroll through its public works program, why not let South

Carolina obtain its fair share?

The issue of government money was secondary to the public versus private ownership

debate, but the promoters of the project saw the large promise and influx of federal dollars as a godsend to the state. The supporters had to answer critics who claimed that Santee Cooper was a misuse of tax dollars and should not be built with government money. South Carolina, in its

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diminished condition, could not have afforded it. Foreman argues that without the willingness

and generosity of the government in providing the grant and bonds for the project, the state

would not have been able to attempt the project of damming the mighty Santee (1939:4). He

praised the openness of the government in saying, “There is no secret to this subsidy. It is clear, avowed, and open to public inspection at any time.” Foreman stated the federal project is

“justified in terms of the human lives which it has saved” and also in its economic impact

(1939:4). Although the loan to the federal Public Works Administration would be repaid, the project was considered economically sound and “self-liquidating” after operation with the added

advantage of furnishing cheap power to the public at low rates. Another writer argued that South

Carolinians had already paid for this national New Deal project by being heavily taxed. “There is no reason why we should be denied the few crumbs we get” (Haws 1939:4). Businessman J.

M. Whitsett agreed, saying that he thought South Carolina’s politicians were justified in asking

the federal government to come to its aid (1933:6). The promoters thought that South Carolina

had earned the right to a costly but lucrative project by virtue of being a poor state, one crushed

by years of economic recession but that nonetheless paid its share of taxes.

Politics influenced the debate around Santee Cooper in another way, by promoting

certain candidates for various offices and their platforms. Politicians and their backers used

rhetoric to link the development to the New Deal and the Democratic Party, the South’s only

viable political party at that time. Senator James F. Byrnes and Burnet Maybank are examples of

politicians who greatly benefited from their role in bringing federal projects to the state and their association with Roosevelt and the New Deal. Out of six documents that show support for

Maybank, one letter to the editor gushed over Maybank’s five-year effort to bring Santee-Cooper to the state by asking, “Is there any other man in South Carolina who is capable of putting over

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such a tremendous deal?” Later he added, “Maybank, our governor, means prosperity and happiness to farmers, labor, and business” (Fass 1938:4). A writer who normally sided with all private interests admiringly noted the “great cooperative effort” of Byrnes and Maybank in accord with the work of other “indefatigable spirits” (Spectator 1942). With support like this frequently appearing in the papers, and with the backing of his party, Maybank naturally became the choice for the first chairman of the South Carolina Public Service Authority. Later, he was

“awarded” a seat in the United States Senate by his constituents.

As described in the above examples, the promoters provided different approaches based

on their political motivations of supporting the war effort and government ownership of utilities.

The promoters invoked the seemingly unrelated schemas of patriotism and the good of public

utilities as strategies to alter the Santee Cooper landscape for hydropower. These schemas,

however, helped to validate and support the dominant cultural model by supporting the current

New Deal government’s view of progress.

The landscape perception of the promoters of the project had less to do with the scale and

features of the actual Santee basin landscape and more to do with the landscape’s meaning.

Specifically, Santee Cooper’s supporters wanted to affix to the landscape an economic value that would translate into progress for the region. With their lack of detailed knowledge of the actual landscape, they dismissed the entire area as a backward wasteland of lost opportunity. With the courting of federal money for local jobs and construction, the promoters sought to transfer the meaning of the landscape from one of preserved history and unique ecological conditions (which

they deemphasized) to one of future economic prosperity.

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Summary

The cultural models emerging from a careful study of the documents written by those

who promoted Santee Cooper comprise several main elements. The models shared by the

political and economic elites of the state, in addition to some key figures from the federal

government, contain the justification for the project. The political leaders and businessmen used

special language and rhetorical strategies to persuade South Carolinians that their lives would be

changed for the better through a boost in economic conditions and quality of life.

If, as Worster argues, that “he who has the capital commands” the landscape (1985:52),

then it is likely that those who are in command also have the motivation and the means to shape

the discourse about it. In the case of Santee Cooper, the federal government and local elected officials had the capital and the political might to shape the landscape for economic growth. The

cultural model of the Santee Cooper landscape disseminated by the promoters was the dominant model, driven by high-level ideals of not only economic progress but also of patriotism. The more widely a text supporting the project was circulated, such as a speech or an editorial, the more likely it was to contain the high-level cultural ideal schemas of progress and/or patriotism as rhetorical devices to persuade a large audience. Additionally, government officials strategically crafted these widely-disseminated texts to persuade South Carolinians to support the

Santee Cooper project. Those writers who appealed to a small audience through means such as personal correspondence with local elected officials tended use lower-level schemas, invoking their personal experiences.

The overarching, organizing schema of the promoters’ viewpoint is one of economic

progress to be brought by the development of the hydroelectric project. The supporters

employed the idea of progress as the means of salvation for the Lowcountry region. This upper

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level schema is supported by a firm base of three main secondary level schemas that connect the

schemas of industry/economic development, opportunity, and prosperity. The writers firmly

believed that the creation of cheap power in the lower part of the state would attract industry to

the area. They sought to fight the inertia and economic stagnation of an impoverished state. The

benefits of an economic revival would raise the quality of life for everyone as well as provide

increased capital and purchasing power. These secondary schemas were the keys to persuading

the public that the Santee Cooper project should be built.

A third lower level of schemas further supported the model. These tertiary level schemas

reveal real-world examples in defending the cause of Santee Cooper. These instances included

the draw of cheap power to be produced by Santee Cooper, immediate employment, the

promotion of its transportation benefits, and the natural resources that South Carolina could

combine with Santee Cooper to establish industry in harmony with its raw materials and

manpower. The electricity, jobs, transportation and natural resources resulting from Santee

Cooper could bring about an improved economic condition that would allow families to

participate in the market economy. Only a few writers forecasted the underplayed theme of

recreation and the future of the Santee Cooper lakes as providing a place for boating, fishing, and

swimming.

These two political schemas would at first appear to operate outside the major

organization of schemas. However, these two can easily be incorporated into the overall model

of economic progress. By 1941, the issue of the nation’s defense became a major reason for the rapid completion of Santee Cooper. The mobilization of the United States for entry into World

War II led to much rhetoric about South Carolina being able to do its share in preparing the country for war, particularly in the growing defense industry in nearby Charleston. This schema

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of defense is interesting because it had attached to it a higher-level schema of patriotism that the

supporters urged from the public. Similarly, government officials touted Santee Cooper as a public utility that would serve the citizens more widely and efficiently than a private corporation.

In the next chapter I analyze whether the dominant cultural model of progress promoted by the supporters of Santee Cooper holds in the same way. Using these two strategies, the writers created additional ways to persuade the public to support Santee Cooper; in short, they emphasized the proposed vision of a future landscape by controlling the meaning of that landscape.

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CHAPTER 4

DECRYING THE DESTRUCTION OF A LANDSCAPE

[T]his whole Santee-Cooper project was conceived in sin and born in iniquity [−] the sin of reckless spending, and the iniquity of ruthless destruction. It has never been demonstrated that the results obtained would justify the exile of a whole people and the annihilation of a whole country (Dwight 1935:5-B).

While the promoters of Santee Cooper sought to justify the project, the protesters argued

for its demise. These opponents of Santee Cooper preferred the traditional Santee basin and

viewed the wholesale social and landscape change as hostile to their way of life and even their

identity. The study of social change within a landscape depends upon cultural contexts in which

people define a space and their experiences within it (Brandenburg and Carroll 1995). Farmers,

for example, have specific ties to the landscape that are established in their dependence upon the land for subsistence and economic survival, and these bonds are interrelated with identity, socialization, and sense of place. The primary social group is of major importance in rural settings, as are small communities in which people rely on each other in times of hardship.

These bonds to the land and the identity that land imparts to individuals and communities formed the basis for the cultural model opposing the Santee Cooper development.

The Protesters of Change

In fighting against the Santee Cooper development, the protesters created their own opposing cultural model, which is shared among the primary documents. The promoters defined the dominant cultural model; the protesters responded to it with their own set of interconnected

and embedded schemas. These opposition schemas, however, while interconnected and

hierarchically structured, were not as forceful or as highly organized as the promoters’ model

114 because those opposed to the Santee Cooper project were defensively reacting to the development and the strategic rhetoric that supported it. Their efforts to argue against Santee

Cooper were more fragmented, a fact that points to the protesters’ experiencing different personal realities. The schemas they invoked to present their case were middle-level and lower- level schemas arising from their more personal experiences with their land or homes or with nature. These schemas reveal that the protesters tended to cognize their landscape in terms of scale, features, and meaning in moderately to highly integrated ways. This greater knowledge of the basin area comes from their intimate knowledge of and association with the landscape they were trying to save from destruction. In addition, the protesters created a variety of rhetorical strategies of their own with which to fight the project.

The protesters contested the hydropower development on two main grounds. First, they were upset that many people would lose their homes and livelihoods. In expressing this viewpoint, they invoked the mid-level schema of “destruction” as squarely in opposition to progress. Second, the protesters disapproved of the government that sponsored Santee Cooper and especially of its management of the project. The landowners’ writings of their experience of their properties being condemned under eminent domain form another mid-level schema. A less shared but still prominent schema was threat to the environment, including the destruction of wildlife and trees.

Many of the protesters lived in the area affected by the Santee Cooper project. They wrote about certain features of the landscape and described their attachments to the land, homes, and communities. In this way, they spoke from their own experiences and described incidences of loss and indignation. This personal familiarity is a typical trait of lower-level schemas that derives from more detailed knowledge of the landscape. Santee Cooper, in their view, would

115 irreversibly change their inhabited landscape beyond recognition, beyond what they ever knew or could imagine.

To talk about the cognitive schemas of those protesting the Santee Cooper project is to say that the protesters’ dominant schema was one of “destruction” caused by progress. Progress and destruction form a dichotomy yet are often closely entwined. In view of this close but oppositional relationship, the upper-level schema remains that of progress supported by the promoters, but the protesters’ reaction to progress is expressed in the discourse of destruction, a mid-level schema. Progress remains the upper-level schema for two reasons: first, progress is a widely shared cultural ideal, particularly in this historical backdrop of the New Deal. Second, the writers employed a view of destruction that was generally based on their personal experiences in the local landscape; these details characterize the lower-level schemas. Third, the protesters acknowledged the progress schema as the driving force for the creation of Santee

Cooper, but they reject the promoters’ ideal of progress based on the destruction of what is familiar and dear to them. Embedded in this schema is an active connotation of Santee Cooper forcefully annihilating their homes and their farms, the ties through their land to their ancestors and the way of life they knew. The destruction of a person’s way of life can be seen as the direct converse of the “progress” of society promoted for the same landscape by the supporters of the project. These conflicts over meaning had the promoters and protesters battling for the same landscape: the Santee basin.

The Charleston newspaper The News and Courier, which published many letters against the project in its “Letters to the Editor” section, provided the largest published forum for the protesters of Santee Cooper. While I found other letters of protest in archives and family albums, the “Letters to the Editor” section contained the most coherent, well-developed

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arguments opposing the development. The protesters of the Santee Cooper project were in some

ways from similar backgrounds, and at least seven of them were women. I say “at least” because

the sex, and even the identity, of six of the writers protesting the project are unknown. They

wrote under such pseudonyms as “An Observer,” “St. John,” “Berkeley,” “DeGustibus” (from

the Latin translation of de gustibus non est disputandum, “There’s no accounting for taste”),

“James Islander” (an island near Charleston), and “Santee.” I do not know why the authors did not use their real names; perhaps they feared retribution from the government or a reduced land settlement from the Authority if it were found out that they protested against Santee Cooper in

print.

Many of the writers, at least sixteen of them, were living in the Santee basin or were

related to families who had homes there. I was able to identify many of them as descendants of

the original Huguenot families who settled in the basin, or as friends or relatives of those who were. One could classify most of the writers as societal elites with a high degree of social and cultural capital, even if they were not rich. They were referred to as having wealth in their large

landholdings but being cash poor in the 1930s (Spruill 2004). Some of these writers include

Henry Ravenel Dwight, Francis Marion Kirk, Anne Sinkler Fishburne, and Florence Lucas.

These were members of patrician families who still maintained close ties to the plantations in the

Santee basin. In addition, most of these writers had access to the Charleston papers,

demonstrating that they were literate and were engaged in some of the issues occurring in the

large city nearby. A few wrote from out of town but had ties to the region, such as Gennie

Simons Smith and Margaretta Childs. Another example is Nicholas Roosevelt, a nephew of

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who lived in Philadelphia but owned about 1,300 acres in

and near the basin that he used primarily for hunting and recreation purposes. In addition,

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Nicholas’s wife Emily was a daughter of the Sinkler family, who owned the Belvidere plantation in the Santee basin. Other writers protesting the project lived in Charleston. A few of these writers were women who took up causes of historic preservation in the state and in the

Lowcountry, such as realtor Susan Pringle Frost and Mrs. Elliott Hutson of Charleston. The rest included farmers, lawyers and other professionals living in Berkeley and Charleston Counties.

The protesters employed several rhetorical devices in crafting persuasive arguments.

Some of the tropes they employed include hyperbole, metaphor, and rhetorical questions. They used emotional appeals and rich descriptions of basin features in their pleas. The writers tried to elicit public sympathy for their cause and to incite others to protest on their behalf.

Destruction and Loss of Homes and Land

The protesters of the project viewed the Santee basin landscape very differently from the promoters. The most common concern expressed by people protesting the Santee Cooper development was the destruction and loss of homes in the basin. This mid-level schema appeared in a large majority of the documents of analysis; thus it was a widely-shared schema including people’s detailed experiences with the landscape as well as their emotional reactions to its anticipated destruction.

In protest of Santee Cooper, the writers acknowledged that the many homes and historic homesteads of several generations of settlers would be inundated by the Santee waters flooding the basin area after impoundment. But just how many would be affected? The Land Owners’

Association of the Santee-Cooper Basin estimated that 1,000 families would be forced to move

(“Land Owners” 1939:12-II). WPA writer Henry Ravenel Dwight said that the flooding would lead to “the desolation of plantations and farms, the destruction of homes, the ruin of churches,

118 the desecration of cemeteries, and the exile of a whole people, white and Negro” (1939:5-B).

Implicit in these statements are indications of the scale of the landscape among the number of families and communities that lived in the basin. The writers viewed the homes and the lands on which they were situated as irreplaceable, cherished for their intrinsic worth, and definitely not for sale (“St. John” 1938:4). In a joint statement of protest that they paid to publish in The News and Courier as an advertisement, the “Land Owners of the Santee Cooper Basin” (“Land

Owners”) said, “We do not wish to have our homes destroyed; our communities wiped out; and our churches and graveyards desecrated” (1939:12-II). Interestingly, so many of the protesters who did not have homes in the basin criticized the project’s dispossession of the basin landowners. Even though they would not lose their own homes, these protesters were sympathetic to those who would.

The landscape held particular meaning for these people as the site of their homes and livelihoods. While the destruction of their homes would affect them materially – they would lose their shelter to the development – the writers primarily lamented the emotional attachment to their land. One cannot objectively measure the loss of home and place as one could measure the economic benefits of the project. The affection the protesters felt for their dwelling places would not fit into any cost-benefit analysis. Less prominent but also important was the loss of what little financial stability and value their farm lands afforded the basin residents in uncertain times.

“Destruction” was the main keyword the protesters used to describe what the Santee

Cooper development would bring to the area. The keywords I coded for this were “destroy” and

“destruction,” appearing in seventeen of the thirty-six documents. This schema referred not only to the devastation of homes by the hydroelectric project but also to the damage of land, forests, wildlife, farms, churches, communities, and family cemeteries. Stanley Morse termed it “wanton

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destruction” (1939:4); “DeGustibus” said that lands, homes, and trees would be “obliterated”

(1939:4). A. K. Hammet exhorted the residents of the basin region to “guard your homes, do not

let them be destroyed by the parasites,” by which he meant the politicians of the state (1939:4).

Sloan expressed sadness thinking about the “old homes lying in the ruthless path of destruction”

wrought by Santee Cooper (1939:4). For poet Archibald Rutledge, the hydroelectric project that

is “full of hazard” would be “destructive of much that makes our state beautiful and significant”

(1939:4). For his part, Dwight claimed that the “villainy” of the “ruthless destruction” would

result in the wholesale “annihilation” of an area (1935:5-B). The writers employed other

adjectives to describe the destruction of the Santee Cooper basin: “complete,” “vast,”

“dangerous,” and “wasteful” are a few. W. P. Gourdin connected the destruction of the area to

the “persecution” of a region “for the benefit of a few” (1939:4). The protesters envisioned the

imminent destruction wrought by Santee Cooper as massive and affecting the landscape on an unprecedented scale. With the obliteration of its unique, irreplaceable natural and anthropogenic

features, the special meaning of the landscape would be destroyed.

The destruction of the farms would also deprive those landowners who made a living

from their farms in the basin of a substantial income. Fighting the promoters’ characterization of

the land as largely “swamp” and a “wasteland,” the protesters countered by portraying the Santee

basin as being in a high state of cultivation. Anne Fishburne claimed the area contained

“thousands of acres of some of the best and most highly cultivated farming lands in the state of

South Carolina” which were “being farmed by some of the most expert and progressive persons in this or any other state” (1939:4). The writers of three separate documents each took umbrage at Santee Cooper manager Robert Cooper’s estimate that there were only 9,000 acres of planted land. Instead, they reported the number of cultivated acres at 32,800, the number given in the

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Authority’s report to Washington (“An Observer” 1939:1, “Land Owners” 1939:12-II, Dwight

1939:5-B). Another resident estimated this planting area at fifty-one square miles, which he

considered to be some of the most valuable arable terrain in the state (Gourdin 1939:4).

The protesters illustrated several beneficial functions of the local landscape that

demonstrated their direct experience with it. This personal familiarity with the land makes this

type of description a low-level schema. They depicted the basin land as being “fertile,” “rich,” and “productive.” The inhabitants were able to put these various types land to different uses.

Several writers mentioned the land was used for timber, planting, and pasture. Farmer W. H.

Dennis, “as a life-long citizen of Berkeley county[sic],” wrote that he engaged in the following occupations on his 700 acres: “farmer, stock raiser, logger and saw miller, surveyor, mechanic, timber estimator” (1940:4). Anne Fishburne said that the Connor family, whose plantation was known as The Rocks, was progressive in growing cotton, corn, and oats and in raising cattle and mule (1939:4). She also mentioned that the African American tenant farmers in the basin had

“up-to-date two-mule farms” and that they maintained “well kept houses and self-respecting families” (1939:4). The protesters tried to portray a land that could support several types of farming and the means of making a living for different groups of people, such as landowners and tenants.

Evicted from their family land, the dispossessed landowners would have to find a new

way to provide for themselves while losing a significant source of income. After discussing how

the project was ostensibly justified by providing people with jobs but how it would take away the

livelihood of people who had lived in the basin for generations, Susan Pringle Frost posed this

rhetorical question: “Why [should] one set be more worthy of making a living than those already there?” (1939:2). Farmers did not think they could find adequate new lands on which to farm

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with the same productive soil. The cost of finding new farmland and moving to it would prove prohibitive to many families. Also, the basin residents resisted the idea of having to construct new houses and buildings with the money they would get from the Authority. Videau L.

Beckwith Kirk asked the readers of The News and Courier:

How many home owners reading this could make the expensive move from a home occupied by their family for 113 years, during four generations, without one cent in advance, being liable for taxes while holding title to the place, losing by the loss of place the major portion of income? (1940:4)

The South Carolina Public Service Authority, in the view of the protesters, did not consider these

costs associated with moving and farming new land (“An Observer” 1939:2). Moncks Corner

attorney Norval Newell was afraid that with the Authority paying such low prices for the land,

his clients “in dire distress” would be forced to seek help from organizations such as the Ku Klux

Klan (1939:4). For W. P. Gourdin, “sorrow and diminished income for the people” in the basin

area would ensue upon the construction of Santee Cooper (1939:4). The hardships of those

losing their ancestral lands, homes, and livelihoods, as the writers attested, would be devastating.

Because of the anticipated destruction of homes and land, the theme of mental anguish

appeared in eleven of the protesting documents. Here again is a low-level schema invoked by

and for the people who anticipated losing what was theirs. The writers linked strong emotions to

this issue, especially despair, anger, and resentment. John Sosnowski wondered about the

“bewildered” mental state of those forced to leave their property, “desperate as to the future, not

knowing what they will do” (1939:4). For Alice Witte Sloan, “War could not be more cruel”

than the removal of homeowners from their ancestral place (1939:4). “R. E.” considered that he knew many families in the basin who “watched with horror the growth of this scheme, but could

122 not believe that it would ever materialize” (1938:4). The emotional pleas of these protesters revolved around the consequences of the project most painful to those affected.

To express the plight of the basin dwellers, a few protesters posed rhetorical questions to the public in published letters. Henry Ravenel Dwight asked of those promoting the project,

“[W]hat do these Santee-Cooper people know of the heartaches, the mental anguish, the sleepless nights and sorrowful days through which all these people, white and colored, are passing?” (1935:5-B). A few writers also expressed their emotional despair in private ways. In a personal letter to her niece Emily Ravenel, Florence LeNoble Lucas wrote a moving account of her despair over the loss of her family’s home to Santee Cooper:

I can’t even choke down the lumps. I am just nauseated over the whole business, money for one’s home, [it] is just too terrible the way I feel. I want to first get going as fast as I can. I do not want to live on paid for land and that is what we are doing now[,] not living any more, just staying[,] our old haunts are no more to me now. I do not even want to go out to walk [. . . .] It’s all hart-breaking[sic] and when all is said and done nothing but disruption is coming of it and all of our homes gone, beloved spots. We are thinking hard and trying hard to do what we can with this house. It’s Mama’s as you [know] but only until the first day of March, and then oh! What will happen, any way we are not talking about it around here very much, no use (c.1939:1).

For many families losing their lands, even the positive results of Santee Cooper would be met with only heartache, sorrow, and bitterness. Local high school teacher and then principal Francis

Marion Kirk remarked on the “sense of uncertainty” that was pervasive in the lives of the landowners: “One feels the resignation of many to a development whose construction they never thought would be commenced.” (1938:III-2).

The memories the basin-dwellers attached to their homesteads further intensified the loss of their ancestral dwellings; this emotional loss is incorporated in the lower-level schemas of the

123 opposition’s cultural model. Although living in Columbia, South Carolina, Gennie Simons

Smith mourned that her heart was still at the plantation, the site of memories of her childhood

(1939:4). Alice Witte Sloan expressed her concern for the displaced people in a letter to the editor of The News and Courier in which she imagined elderly women wandering about in a disoriented fog. She compared the story of an old Sullivan’s Island neighbor, Mrs. Chambers, who lost her home under circumstances similar to those of the basin families:

The poor old woman lost her mind and would wander around the neighborhood hunting for her home. Death, fortunately, soon claimed her. Since learning that the Santee-Cooper project would necessitate the destruction of old homes, I have been haunted by the possibility of some old lady living in the home of her forefathers, her sole happiness lying in her memories amid the scenes of her birth. What will happen to her? (1939:4)

Many people in the Santee basin had fond family reminiscences of life there that imparted meaning based on family ties. The Santee Cooper project would wrench away the displaced elderly persons’ comforting memories by obliterating the landscape which was encoded in their memories.

The loss of home and place would also take a particular toll on more vulnerable populations from the basin, especially the aged and the poor. Gennie Simons Smith stated that these would become “an exiled people,” forced to start life somewhere else. “Many of these people are nearing the sun down of life, and this thing is a stark tragedy in their lives” (Smith

1939:4). In an anonymous letter to the editor of The News and Courier, “R. E.” also reported on the elderly people who were about to lose their homes:

Now that the project seems about to be begun, they are crushed. It has embittered the last years of many old people, and will finally kill them. And when they do die, broken-hearted, their cemeteries will be flooded, and their home laid waste (1938:4).

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The loss of place is inextricably tied to sites of memories, lives embedded, and emotional attachments to the landscape.

Other vulnerable populations included the very poor white and African American families who inhabited the basin. Henry Ravenel Dwight claimed that for them his “sympathies are deep and sincere” (1935:5-B). The African American families were of concern to a few writers, who wrote and acted out of a degree of paternalism, since African Americans at that time in the area were denied a voice in political matters. Henry Ravenel Dwight assessed the plight of these “sons of the soil” who worked on the land with a mule and a plow for over 200 years. He claimed that the “proposed exile” is a “major tragedy to these humble people” (1935:5-B). Thus, the clearing and inundation of the Santee Cooper project would take away a means of living for the African Americans as well as the white families of the basin. It would also affect those most economically vulnerable as tenants on others’ land, in addition to the large landholding group.

The opposition emphasized the history of the Santee basin landscape as another schema.

Here, the schema of historical heritage of the basin approaches mid-level status since the schema of pride South Carolinians had toward their past achievements and lifestyle was widely-shared.

The schema here involves a few abstract, generalized cultural ideals such as heritage, pride, and romance based on the sense of history that permeated the landscape, which people often wrote about in vague but florid prose. In other words, this historical schema is different from the lower-level schemas because they frequently wrote about the past without invoking specific details.

Many of the protesters viewed the basin territory as historically significant and imbued with the grace and hospitality of the former glorious plantation era. The historic features prominent to the landscape included the ancestral grounds and their homes as “priceless bits of

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history” (Mrs. Elliot Hutson 1940:2). Victor Stanley, Jr. said that “no visitor can fail [to] realize

and feel something of that culture and romance of the Golden Age of Carolina” in the basin region that “retains so much of the Old South’s glory” (1935:4). Santee Cooper would destroy the “fairest land” of the beautiful Santee basin and the “most historic sections” of the state (“R.

E.” 1938:4). Writing from her home in Washington, D. C., Margaretta Childs condemned the

“destruction of one of the few living communities where the beauty and graciousness which was once the South’s distinction, are an integral part of daily life” (1935:4). In this schema of heritage, history, beauty, and lifestyle combine to create a loaded impression of cultural meaning that derives from the past.

The details of history presented as facts supported the mid-level schema of heritage and

history in the basin landscape. Frequently, the authors listed their own associations with the

plantations that would be lost, or listed the state’s major figures and their ties to the land.

General Francis “Swamp Fox” Marion’s home at Pond Bluff and his grave was among these

storied plantations, as was General William Moultrie’s home at Northampton. Other important

historic markers in the basin include the Eutaw Springs Revolutionary battle site and “the scenes

of many daring raids by Generals Thomas Sumter and Francis Marion” that “will be blotted from

the sight of man forever” (Sumter 1939:4). John Sumter also pointed out that although the

federal government spent millions to reconstruct historic Williamsburg, Virginia and St.

Augustine, Florida, “a huge expenditure is planned to destroy one of the most historic and

beautiful sections of the South” (1939:4). The government, in many of the protesters’ minds,

was planning the obliteration of one of the Lowcountry’s most historically important landscapes.

Writers also presented particular details about the pre-inundation landmarks of homes, gravesites

and battlegrounds, employing these facts to activate the mid-level schema of historical meaning.

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Many of the basin’s pre-Civil War plantations named by the writers still existed in the

1930s. Fearing the impending Santee Cooper development, Francis Marion Kirk wrote about each plantation in a series for The News and Courier in 1935. He listed the houses that remained before the flooding of the basin: Belvidere, Cedar Spring, Eutaw, Hanover, Loch Dhu,

Northampton, Ophir, Pond Bluff, Pooshee, the Rocks, Somerset, Springfield, Walnut Grove, and

Whitehall (Kirk 1939:4). Gennie Simons Smith lamented that her ancestral home, Pond Bluff, willed to her great-grandfather by Mrs. Francis Marion, would be “submerged beneath the waters of that great artificial lake” (1939:4). Dwight noted that the descendants of many of the small farmers listed in the census of 1790 still lived on their family land (1935:5-B). The older

Huguenot families who had settled in the basin believed strongly that the government was forcing them to sell their birthright.

Several other writers who did not live in the basin recounted their personal experiences of touring the plantations set for inundation. After her tour of those historic sites, Mrs. Elliott

Hutson of Charleston reported that the antebellum homes of the “descendants of the ORIGINAL settlers” (her emphasis) were irreplaceable and valuable from a “museum standpoint” and likened the inundation to the destruction of the South by Sherman’s army in the Civil War.

“Now, our own National Government, in time of peace, provides the money for a project which will destroy . . . one of the cradles of our own American civilization and history” (Hutson

1940:1). Advocates of historic preservation, not just the landowners, sought to preserve the basin lands for generations of future Americans to visit. Sumter called on the “splendid spirits of

Sumter, Marion, Pinckney, Rutledge and Hampton” to “inspire patriotic South Carolinians to speak out and halt this outrageous attack on our beloved state” (1939:4).

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The writers also mentioned the natural splendor of the area as an extraordinary feature of

the landscape set for destruction. The “matchless beauty” of this section of the Lowcountry was

equal to a “priceless heritage” to be “deliberately wiped out of existence by a man-made disaster

equaled rarely by war, earthquake, or hurricane” (Sumter 1939:4). Margaretta Childs termed it a

“singularly beautiful region” (1935:4). Other writers mentioned the beauty and the architecture

of the “fine” and “handsome” plantation homes themselves. Mrs. Elliott Hutson praised the

beautiful carved wood paneling in these homes as being unrivaled elsewhere (1940:1).

Springfield, home of the Palmer family, was particularly famous for its “breath-taking” carved

woodwork “so delicately done by hand” (Stanley 1935:4). Some of these priceless architectural

elements were imported from Europe generations before and were irreplaceable.

In addition to the loss of homes and livelihoods, the Santee Cooper project would efface additional emotional attachments to communities, churches, and gravesites. The gravesites were particularly important to people in this region because many placed a great value on their genealogical roots. For them, the landscape that included their buried ancestors endowed the land with a sense of place, history, and family connection. The number of graves estimated to be affected by the project ranged between 2,000 (“An Observer” 1939:4) to over 5,000 (“Land

Owners” 1939:12-II). Some of the graves were described as dating back to the seventeenth century (“St. John” 1938:4). The cemeteries included old family burying grounds, some of which held the remains of important historic figures, and church cemeteries. The writers

contemplated such desecration of these old cherished cemeteries with regret and emotional

distress. The writers also considered the desecration of the gravesites devastating to the African

Americans of the basin, since “their community life, their churches and their cemeteries [are] as

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dear to them as to any other citizen” (Dwight 1935:5-B). The anticipated loss of the

communities and churches was cause for suffering among those who lived in the basin.

Early on in my research, I assumed that the notion of “sacrifice” would be prominent as a

way of conveying the emotional and personal attachment of the persons living in the Santee

Cooper basin to their past, their homes, and their property. Since it is a cultural ideal that relates

to human values, sacrifice would, of course, act as a mid- or upper-level schema. While the notion of sacrifice is of course inherent in the loss of the families’ land to the Santee Cooper project, I only found specific mention of the word “sacrifice” in three of the documents. The

Land Owners professed that they saw “no reason why they should be sacrificed for South

Carolina and they do not intend to be” for power development (1939:12-II). For the families affected by the development, the hydroelectric project should be “worth the sacrifice” and its promoters should “not have to hide from the public the truth of what these sacrifices really are”

(Anne Fishburne 1939:4). “St. John” lamented the sacrifice of people’s freedom to live “their lives where and the way they saw fit” by being forced to relocate for a hydro power plant that may never operate (1938:4). The sacrifice in the destruction of their homes, land, and way of living was unimaginable for many of the basin families.

Doubt over the Project

The protesters clamored for the general public to join them in expressing their doubts

over this large government project. The suspicions raised by the protesters revolved around

three main schemas: one, the doubt that it would be completed; two, the dubious economic value

of the project; and three, the skepticism in the feasibility that Santee Cooper would ever be able

to produce electricity. These schemas fall into the lower-level type since they contain many

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details and fill-in slots. Additionally, the schemas can be viewed as a whole in the form of a

persuasive rhetorical strategy used by the writers. If they were able to convince the public that

the destruction of the landscape and the expense of the project would not yield real results, then

they could expect the public to join their protest.

The doubt that the project would ever be completed pressed heavily on the writers’ minds

and appeared in twelve of the texts. The suspicion raised by this disbelief shows that the opponents held certain views of the scale of the landscape in their minds. Their cognition of the basin landscape – its expansiveness and the knowledge they claimed of the geological features that would impede development – led to their skepticism about the project’s completion. Since the residents of the basin did not want to be driven off their lands in case construction of Santee

Cooper never finished, their doubt took the form of a lower-level schema. They pointed out facts and details, such as dollar amounts and engineering faults, to explain their misgivings about the project’s completion. “An Observer” reported in The Berkeley Democrat that, as of March of

1939, it had been five years since the application of the project had been filed in Washington, and that it had been more than two years since the project was allowed to continue, yet “no evidence of construction is yet in sight” (1939:1). For others, the project seemed “remote,”

“contingent,” “questionable,” and predicated on a big “if.” The anonymous “Berkeley” wrote that doubt of the project’s completion “lurked in the minds of everyone” (1939:4). Others reported rumors that the “whole scheme was too absurd to be worth worrying about,” meaning that they thought there was no merit to the project, nor that it would ever be completed (“James

Islander” 1939:4). The protesters sought engender doubt in the minds of the public to end the

project so they would not have to give up their lands.

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Other concerns about the project rested on its dubious economic value and the disbelief

that the state and federal government would provide the money to complete it. The Land

Owners of the Santee Cooper Basin cited the project’s high costs, which originally prohibited

private interests from developing the hydroelectric power and navigation with the Santee River.

They pointed out that the project was “uneconomical” (1939:12-II). They further stated that the project would never be completed, mainly because the state and the federal government lacked the additional millions of dollars that it would cost. Saying the creation of Santee Cooper was only “a political gesture,” Spectator characterized the situation with this statement: “Santee-

Cooper calls for the whole barrel of flour without having made one pan of biscuits” (1942:3-II).

According to him, then, Santee Cooper had not yielded results despite all the money, time, resources, and manpower put to its creation of Santee Cooper.

The Santee Cooper detractors noted the high cost of the project. A. K. Hammet asserted that the project would cost each citizen in South Carolina an average of ten dollars a kilowatt

“before a shovel full of dirt is ever thrown on the project” (1939:4). The Land Owners of the

Santee Cooper Basin reminded people that the Authority’s original estimate of the project was

thirty-four million dollars but that it grew to above fifty million dollars (1939:12-II). They and

other protesters considered the high cost of the project a wasteful use of money. Conservatives

resented the proposed tax increases as the means to finance the project. As Hammet pointed out,

the citizens of South Carolina would have to “stay under the yoke and pay off the debt” of the

massive project (1939:4). This group of citizens was adverse to paying more taxes for almost

any government project.

Six proponents of modern steam plants, instead of hydropower, fall within the scope of analysis. They considered a steam plant powered by coal to be less destructive of the

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Lowcountry landscape and a cheaper producer of electricity. John Sumter said the destruction

was happening “ostensibly in the name of ‘progress.’” Then he asked if it is truly “progress” if the hydro power is not needed, especially since it costs more to make by damming a river than by building a modern steam plant (1939:4). The purported cost of a steam plant was only ten million dollars, as opposed to the forty or fifty million dollars estimated for the cost of the Santee

Cooper clearing, construction, and facilities (Sosnowski 1939:4, Rutledge 1939:4). The anonymous “Santee” analyzed the numbers to report that Santee Cooper power would cost about

$1,000 per horsepower to develop compared to the steam plant built by the Duke Power company, at a cost of $50 per horsepower (1940:4). Another writer cited the better efficiency of modern steam plants powered by coal as compared with hydroelectric power (Boyer 1939:4).

Renowned state poet Archibald Rutledge favored steam over hydropower because “nobody would be hurt by it” (1939:4). He also did not want his plantation downriver to be adversely affected by the siltation and saltwater incursion that the damming and diversion of the rivers would cause.

The doubt led some to think that, for many reasons, the ambitious project was not

feasible. Others felt that the converse of that statement was true: since Santee Cooper was not

viable, it would never be completed. However, nine of the documents contained direct concerns

about the question of the feasibility of the project and its engineering. The issue of feasibility

was threefold: one, disbelief as to whether the dam and reservoirs would hold water and control

floods; two, whether the project could produce electricity safely and efficiently; and three,

whether water transportation from Charleston to Columbia would be practicable.

In their opposition to the five-mile earthen dam, over twenty-six miles of earthen dikes,

and the 4,000 foot concrete spillway to contain the mighty Santee River, the protesters expressed

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suspicions that the dam would not hold water. Much of the distrust of the project centered on the

physical features of the Santee basin. The opponents questioned the engineers’ claims that the

dam project could hold water because the opponents recognized that underneath the soil’s

surface were mostly silt, sand, and clay. In their view, these geological layers would not make a

suitable foundation for a dam. The limestone formation underneath part of the proposed

reservoir site also contained sinkholes and underground streams. Two of the protesting

documents cited that the solid rock required for a dam foundation could only be found at a depth

of 200 feet below the surface (“An Observer” 1939:1, “Land Owners” 1939:12-II). An engineer,

William Boyer said that the flat coastal plain of the Santee basin presented a problem for

containing water:

The country drained by the Santee river is flat; and the stream flow, consequently sluggish. High heads are out of the question. Lack of speed must, therefore, be compensated for by increased volume. Hence a large impounding reservoir becomes indispensable. The country being flat, no hills are available for retaining walls, so that the entire area of the proposed reservoir must be artificially enclosed. This stupendous undertaking would be hazardous enough were the subsurface conditions favorable; but geological survey shows the underlying strata to consist of two layers of clay or marl separated by one of limestone more or less in a rotten condition (1939:4).

The Land Owners of the Santee Cooper Basin cited a leak in the Norris Dam project in

Tennessee caused by a limestone spring, noting that the reservoir’s water level had to be lowered to contain the leak (1939:12-II). “An Observer” remarked, “It does not seem reasonable to rest

any kind of dam on such a foundation and expect it to hold water” (1939:1). Several authors also

expressed doubt that the dam would control the massive floods. T. C. Lucas grumbled that the

Authority’s claim of flood control was “absurd” since in his view the dam could not both release

a sufficient amount of water in times of flood and keep enough water in the reservoir to produce

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power at a steady rate (1939:4). Those concerned about the feasibility of the project also questioned whether the dam and powerhouse would last over time to produce electricity. In

order for enough water to go through the turbines at the power house, the water would have to be

spread over a vast area because of the relatively shallow reservoirs (Sosnowski 1939:4). The silt

and mud brought by the river would ruin the turbines.

Finally, the protesters questioned the navigational phases of the Santee Cooper project,

such as the waterway that was proposed from Charleston all the way to Columbia, South

Carolina. According to John Sosnowski, the navigational claims of the project were “farcical”

because of the improvement of roads and highways and because trucks were now able to haul

freight at speeds of up to sixty miles per hour. Arguing that people could more affordably and

quickly haul commercial goods by truck, he asked, “Who would use Santee-Cooper water to

carry freight?” (Sosnowski 1939:4). In the Berkeley Democrat, “An Observer” dismissed the

navigational features as being “of too little value to warrant discussion” (1939:1). The Land

Owners claimed that the project no longer contained the provision to provide navigation all the

way to Columbia (1939:12-II). Another protester remarked that Santee Cooper’s press releases

ignored the navigational features because, he said, “We suspect that they are ashamed of it”

(Gourdin 1939:4).

Anti-Government Reactions

A separate response on the part of many protesters of the project was anti-government

sentiment. This mid-level schema accounts for a separate sub-model of the protesters since it is

based on separate cultural ideals (e.g., not progress), including those of liberty and democracy.

The protesters hated the New Deal and resented the extension of federal control into the politics

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of the state and lives of its citizens. Some of those protesters believed the New Deal threatened

their democratic freedom; some simply distrusted politicians. This anti-government schema also

links to the schema of destruction through the arguments of the land owners who opposed the

land-buying process and the condemnation of the land under eminent domain laws. Again, the powerful schema of anti-government reactions played an important role in the rhetorical strategies of the protesters.

As part of this rhetorical strategy to express anti-government attitudes, the protesters used

metaphor to deride the government’s involvement in Santee Cooper. They described it as a

“bubble” filled with empty promises and “a game” in which only politicians know the rules. The writers used other metaphors such as “hatching” and giving birth to “a child of politics” (born of political greed and corruption) and an “empire of octopus” (to describe the far-reaching tentacles of government towards the private citizens of the state). The protesters resented the government’s extension of this project into their lives and upon their land because it exceeded the constitutional limits of government intrusion.

Thirteen of the documents resented the “politics as usual” approach the Authority and the

South Carolina politicians were taking regarding Santee Cooper. In these documents, the

protesters implicitly refer to a schema of good old-fashioned greed. The politicians, they

maintained, were greedy for votes, money, and power. Referencing a speech made by

Charleston Mayor Lockwood, Videau L. Beckwith Kirk called the South Carolina Public Service

Authority a “child of politics” (1940:4). Many of the protesters thought that the New Deal

politicians had the most to gain from the large scheme, in terms of votes and employment.

Hammet described Santee Cooper as “a straightout political masterpiece, designed solely to give

special friends and relatives easy, high salaried jobs” (1939:4). He observed these high-salaried

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appointees in newspaper photographs, “eating, drinking, feasting, having a big time” off the

government dime (Hammet 1939:4). The Land Owners of the Santee Cooper basin also pointed

out that most of the high-ranking appointees and employees of Santee Cooper were either active

in politics or were friends and family of those politicians (1939:12-II). From her residence in

Charleston, historic preservation advocate Susan Pringle Frost wrote that Santee Cooper was

“hatched by the politicians for nothing in the world but to advance their careers” (1939:2).

Others admitted that the politicians promoted the scheme for their own political and financial

advancement, and that they were acting in their personal interest and providing “soft jobs” for

themselves and their friends. W. P. Gourdin wrote cynically that when the fight over Santee

Cooper is done, “The political gentlemen as usual will come out on top” (1939:4).

The protesters also questioned the constitutionality of Santee Cooper; their doubts verbalized the high-level schema of liberty and freedom that the constitution of the United States provides to its citizens. These protesters loathed the New Deal government that sought to use government power and money to provide jobs, spur economic growth, and initiate government programs to help those affected by the Depression. They were either opposed to the government control of public utilities or on the government infringement of personal property rights. They viewed the “taking” of the government as part and parcel of the “political lies” and unfulfilled promises of the New Deal. They also resented the expensive project’s resulting citizen taxation increase.

The issue of government control of such a large power utility angered many anti-New

Deal conservatives. They mainly worried about the far-reaching effects of federal government programs on both businesses and citizens. Noting that the purpose of the Santee Cooper was ostensibly to bring government money and jobs to South Carolina, John Sosnowski claimed,

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“We would be much better off if never a New Deal dollar had gone into any state” (1939:4).

Another called Santee Cooper a “new irresponsibility of delegated power” (“DeGustibus”

1939:4). Margaretta Childs blasted the project as “a shortsighted, nefarious device of hand to mouth economy” (1935:4). One conservative columnist said that citizens should not establish or

permit the political control of electrical power by the state (“Spectator” 1942:3-II). John Sumter

suggested that the true objective of Santee Cooper was to make the Lowcountry a “little TVA”

and to socialize South Carolina by the federal control of utilities (1939:4). Others feared the

government waste of the New Deal project and likened it to imperialist and communist regimes

of other countries.

For his part, Nicholas Roosevelt was concerned that the federal and state control of the

electrical project would damage the interests of the private power corporations, particularly the

Duke Power Company, which operates out of North Carolina (1934:1). “Spectator” was

incensed that the government creation and control of Santee Cooper was tantamount to a state

monopoly. He asked rhetorically, “Are you so impressed with the business ability and zeal of

politicians that you would put such a mammoth enterprise in their hands?” (1942:3-II).

The protesters staunchly defended their property rights and the notion of “liberty” in light

of Santee Cooper’s efforts to acquire over 160,000 acres of land from thousands of property

owners by any means it could. One called the land acquisition efforts an “utter disregard of

personal rights” (“James Islander” 1939:4), while another described them as a “ruthless invasion

of personal property” (Sumter 1939:4). Sosnowski reflected, “If the government uses its power

without reason, to the injury of its citizens, then the people will destroy those who make such ill

use of their power” (1939:4). In the following statement, Hammet urged the citizens of the state to defend their rights:

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If we have any clause in our constitution whereby the United States government is given authority to wreck, take a man’s home regardless of whether he wants to dispose of it or not, then we have no constitution, rights or freedom. Every person should shoulder a gun and protect his own rights, and property, defying any man to set foot upon it (1939:4).

Another letter-to-the-editor writer noted that South Carolina has a “glorious past, in her defense of freedom” in the Revolutionary and Civil wars, one that was being spoiled by government excess (“R. E.” 1938:4). Personal liberty and freedom were at stake here, “threatened by this game of politics” (V. Kirk 1940:4). These protesters perceived Santee Cooper to be gravely compromising the ideals of the founding fathers and democracy itself.

Other protesters decried the bureaucratic and financial might the government employed to achieve its ends. They hated this new forceful nature of government power and compared it with stealing by violent, threatening means. Dwight noted that the government’s destruction of the basin landscape “while done under the guise of law (it will be force in the end), is no less grievous to us than if done at the point of a pistol” (1935:5-B). Some even compared it to the excesses of Hitler, with “the suspicion that the high-handed methods of European dictators are to be used to regiment the people of South Carolina” in taking away their property rights (Sumter

1939:4). More directly, Hammet vilified the “underhanded” and “sneaky” government for taking property by “blindfolding the South” and declared, “The only difference between Hitler and our government is that Hitler takes what he wants openly before the eyes of the people” (1939:4).

He further lambasted the “reign” of “King Roosevelt” and the “spending and lending” habits of the New Deal (Hammet 1939:4). These were strong words for people who intended to defend their liberty in the face of a growing governmental presence in South Carolina.

The perceived dubious economic worth of the project was parallel with the view of the project as nothing more than “pure politics.” Here, the schema of dubious economic benefit

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directly contrasts with the notion of progress, since the protesters argued that progress in the

form of cheap electricity was not needed by the state. The protesters argued directly against the

promoters’ claims that large-scale generation of cheap power would benefit the state and the

region. The opposition considered the promoted electric power “unnecessary” and “not useful.”

In a statement that matched the lack of need for power with the distrust of politicians, Hammet stated that Santee Cooper “is not essential by any means to industry but aplenty politically”

(1939:4). Two paper mills established nearby were already operating and the program of rural

electrification was also expanding, “all without the benefit of Santee Cooper power” (“An

Observer” 1939:1). Other writers referred to the existing unused surplus of power in the state,

“more hydro electric power than the market can absorb” (Roosevelt 1934:1). These protesters

stated that the Broad River Power company (from Lake Murray, outside of Columbia) sold its

surplus electricity to neighboring states for industrial purposes. Several other authors estimated

that the Lake Murray hydroelectric powerhouse was only producing from twenty percent (Morse

1939:4, “Land Owners” 1939:12-II) to one-third of its potential output (St. John 1938:4).

William Boyer doubted there would be sufficient demand for the proposed fifty-seven million

kilowatts of power, saying that the probable market was “deeply enshrouded in the fog of the

future” (1939:4). Local farmer W. H. Dennis minimized the benefit of electricity when he

argued that maintaining the timber industry in the area was more important than electrical power

and lights (1940:4).

The protesters also argued against the suggestion that Santee Cooper would bring

industry to the state, the major justification for the project in the eyes of the politicians and

promoters. According to William Gourdin, the proximity of cheap electric power played only a

minor role in the decisions of industries to locate themselves in a particular place. Another cited

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the creation of electricity at Lake Murray that brought no industry to Columbia since the cheap

transmission of power from one area to another made it possible for industries to locate wherever

they chose (Dwight 1935:5-B). The authors argued that a reduction of taxes, availability of raw

materials, local labor, and access to markets are the reasons industries choose a particular

location, not access to local electricity, which they could get just as cheaply through transmission

lines (Gourdin 1939:4, Hammet 1939:4, Dwight 1935:5-B).

As for the assertion of local prosperity, several protesters discounted the promoters’

claims that Santee Cooper would bring lasting economic benefits to the people of Berkeley

County. In their writings the protesters directly contradicted the supporters’ belief in progress

for the local people. In one argument, they asserted that the damage done to the local

community would outweigh the benefits brought by the temporary construction jobs (N.

Roosevelt 1934:1). In a personal letter to his sister, Dr. Joseph Norman Walsh of the Berkeley

County Hospital admitted that the benefits of Santee Cooper would be limited mostly to the construction phase of the project (1934:1). He stated, “After it is built, unless we can get some industry to come in we will feel little benefit from it” (1934:1). Henry Ravenel Dwight pointed out that the thousands of WPA employees to be brought from all counties around the state would most likely not spend their wages in Berkeley County but would send them back home to their families (1935:5-B). A citizen adverse to paying more taxes opined that South Carolina would have to pay too high a price for government-supported jobs that would only be temporary (“St.

John” 1938:4). The protesters reacted strongly and argued against the dominant, Santee Cooper- supported schemas of progress by claiming that the government would away their cherished

rights and constitutional freedom as American citizens.

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The Land-buying Process

The land-buying and condemnation process was perhaps the most emotionally wrenching

and painful experience of the landholders in the basin, and one for which the protesters held

special disgust and bitterness. This schema of outrage over the government’s taking of their land

was embedded with the anti-government schema. It also linked strongly to the schema of destruction. The protesters appealed to the schema of liberty/freedom, but these same writers

also supported these schemas with that of personal experience at the hands of the Santee Cooper

land appraisers and the condemnation process.

In a joint statement that appeared in the local newspapers, the Land Owners of the Santee

Cooper Basin stated, “The homes and land of at least 95% of the land owners of the Santee-

Cooper basin are not for sale, although they may be forced to sell, or to have their property

condemned by the Authority” (1939:12-II). The Authority acquired their land under law of

eminent domain, with such powers expanded by the creation of the Act that formed the South

Carolina Public Service Authority. Set to turn over their land, held in fee simple, to a

government relying on the expanded use of eminent domain, the landowners protested.

“Berkeley” noted that the act that created the South Carolina Public Service Authority also

expanded government powers to exercise current eminent domain rights (1939:4), and the

legislature passed an act to further expand those rights in 1940: House Bill 908, Senate 118 (Kirk

1940:4). The landowner would sell his fee simple land title to the Authority, but if the

landowners did not agree on the price offered by the Authority, the Authority could condemn the

land and deposit the purchase money in an escrow account for later retrieval. Occasionally, the

landowners took the Authority to court for a special jury to set the price of the land. In this

process, an arbitration board of three men would, after hearing from both sides, decide the price

141 the Authority should pay. However, the Authority could appeal the price in circuit court, where a decision would generally be advantageous to the Authority. Then the Authority could proceed

“with their destruction as merrily as if they owned the place” (V. Kirk 1940:4). Many of Santee

Cooper’s protesters decried these government land-taking practices. In her statement Gennie

Simons Smith is resigned to accept the inevitable:

The land owners will sell their property. They know that they must, but they do want a fair and reasonable price for their land, and feel that they are entitled to some remuneration for the complete destruction to their homes and their means of making a livelihood (1939:4).

For other landowners in nearby Pinopolis, a small village of high ground that juts into the basin, their property would only be several feet above the water line of the Santee Cooper reservoir, placing it at risk in times of flood (“Santee” 1940:4).

The protesters resented a lack of representation by Berkeley County residents on the board of the Authority and in local Santee Cooper offices, especially in the land-buying division.

Local lawyer Norval Newell pointed out that Berkeley County did not have any of its own citizens represented in the Authority, nor on the board of land acquisition, nor on the appraisal board that set the prices for the land (1939:4). “Berkeley” noted that the problem with the fee simple title transfer of land is that, if the project failed to work, the Authority could sell the land or utilize it for other public or private purposes such as a timber or hunting reserve (1939:4), or worse, turn to land speculation (Simons Smith 1939:4). Although there was a provision to allow landowners to buy back their land if the project never materialized, people would be unfairly required to pay full price to get their land back (“Berkeley” 1939:4). Many basin landowners were opposed to giving up their fee simple titles, favoring instead easements or leasing of their land.

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The price paid for the land was another issue of considerable debate, appearing in nine of the protesting texts. The Land Owners of the Santee Cooper Basin and “An Observer” acknowledged that the Authority had allotted $2,145,500 for the purchase of basin lands and accused them of appraising the land to fit the amount of money that they would use to purchase the acres needed (“Land Owners” 1939:12-II, “An Observer” 1939:1). By these calculations, the protesters cited that the Authority would have to pay an average of thirteen dollars an acre for the

Santee Cooper basin lands, compared to twenty-seven to thirty-one dollars per acre for similar hydroelectric developments. “An Observer” noted that TVA landowners received an average of

$51.82 per acre (1939:1). One basin landowner, D. W. Cross, explained his family’s situation upon receiving less for the land than it was worth:

I am sixty-seven years old, always paid my taxes and supported our party. Father of thirteen children; was burned out of home and all furnishings. Gave to my children an equal portion of my [real] estate which the Santee authority[sic] takes away from them and only offers one-third of the price they have paid for lands not any better than my lands. Why this disparity? (1941:4)

With this statement, Mr. Cross referred to the purchase of lands for other federal projects that resulted in the landowners obtaining three times the price that was being offered for his land. In the report of another sale to the Authority, a man received only $1.35 an acre for his timberland, to which Mrs. Elliott Hutson responded, “One tree is worth more than that for fire wood”

(1940:2). The landowners greatly resented the forced sale of their land at only one-third of the price they thought it worth. The Authority’s process of offering a deliberately low price on the land, and then saying, “Take it or leave it,” then to be condemned and left in the hands of a jury, was considered unjust (“An Observer” 1939:1). J. D. Cozby said he knew farmers in the basin were originally willing to sell since Santee Cooper promised they would be paid liberally for their lands “and fully compensated for any damages they might suffer,” but this good faith

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disintegrated when land agents came to these farmers “with a one dollar bill [. . . ] telling them to

sign on the dotted line or else” (1939:4). The price of the land was not sufficient to allow the landholders to purchase the same type of land somewhere else.

Not only was the price paid for the lands deemed unfair, but many also considered the eminent domain process unfairly skewed to benefit the Authority. Some believed that the

Authority did not allow adequate time to accept or reject its offer for the land. Gennie Simon

Smith asked, “Why ten days in which to accept the offer, against over a year in which to make

the offer? Where do the scales of justice balance here?” (1939:4). Norval Newell discussed the

inconveniences of legal and travel expenses his landowning clients faced if they did not agree to

the price of land set by the Authority’s “imported, foreign land appraisers” (1939:4). Videau L.

Beckwith Kirk cited the disrespectful attitude of these appraisers as they trampled his yard, pried

into bedroom closets, and asked impertinent questions (1940:4). The Authority was blamed also for the deceitful (albeit undocumented) practices of giving and selling “for practically nothing timber, houses, wire fencing, etc.” to people who would testify as witnesses to help the Authority purchase the lands at the lower prices it wanted to pay (Dennis 1940:4). Further, the landowners, after selling their land or having it condemned and bought, would have to pay taxes to the government on the sale of their land, which they considered an additional injustice. Adding to the pain of selling the land under threat of condemnation was the requirement to vacate their homes quickly, taking with them what they wanted.

The landowners greatly resented the misinformation spread by the promoters of the

project about the basin lands. One characterization of the land they especially begrudged was

that of the basin as a swampy wasteland. The basin residents believed the Authority purposefully disseminated this description of the basin to justify purchasing the land cheaply and

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destroying it. Writing that he was “sick, tired, and thoroughly disgusted,” Francis Marion Kirk resented being told by “outsiders what a glorious thing the Santee-Cooper project is going to do for this ‘desolate, deserted, and denuded’ section” (1939:4). He further begrudged the

“consistent and persistent effort on the part of promoters” to make deliberately false claims about the land that the Authority wanted to purchase (1939:4). Many of the protesters believed the mischaracterization of the landscape created the justification for taking it away from them and flooding it to form the reservoirs.

Loss of Wildlife

The threat to wildlife and nature was a final schema employed by a distinct group of

protesters regarding the creation of the Santee Cooper project. This schema is also tied to that of

destruction, but it is linked to another high-level schema, nature. These protesters believed that

nature was intrinsically important and worth protecting against the wholesale destruction that

Santee Cooper would allow. The features of the Santee basin were ecologically important and

thus needed preservation from the forces of ruin. The writers referred to the destruction in the

basin of flora and fauna such as trees, birds, and especially ducks. The region was well known

for its special habitats as breeding grounds and its attraction of migratory birds.

The writers who defended nature and wildlife against Santee Cooper destruction were

those who had experience in the basin landscape as naturalists and sport hunters, like Alexander

Sprunt, Jr., and state poet Archibald Rutledge. This section does not include the opinions of

those who wrote from outside South Carolina, such as United States Biological Survey Director

“Ding” Darling and the Audubon Society (as their comments are covered in Chapter Two).

Several of the protesters claimed that the Santee environment was irreplaceable, remarking, “It is

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the kind of land that most people are trying to restore rather than destroy” (“St. John” 1938:4).

John Sosnowski wanted the Santee forest with its teeming wildlife to remain as it was and to

“stand as a monument of nature’s glory” (1939:4). One author reminded the readers of The

News and Courier that the Santee delta was an important salt marsh breeding ground that Santee

Cooper would destroy, with “the resultant diminishing of the supply of game and of fish, shrimp

and other products of the sea along our coast” (Gourdin 1939:4). State Poet Archibald Rutledge

termed this Santee Delta area “one of the principal wild life [sic] refuges of our whole country”

(1939:4). The notion of scale is inherent within this understanding of the landscape, since these

writers link the basin to other regional ecosystems of which the Santee River and the basin are a

part. The ecological advantages of the vast and unique Santee watershed would be lost to the

dominant development plans for industry.

Several of the writers also mentioned the loss of trees and forests in the clearing of the

basin for inundation. This schema of forest loss contains a tension in the “conservation” of

forest resources. On one hand, the writers would miss the virgin and secondary forests for their

beauty and intrinsic ecological significance. On the other hand, the protesters recognized the

economic value of timber as a viable cash crop and of the forests, both of which Santee Cooper would cut down and flood. Although the main view of conservation today is to protect resources as they are for future generations, foresters in the 1930s and 1940s viewed conservation as means of maintaining a sustainable timber industry.

Writers such as J. D. Cozby referred to the valuable timber growing on the land and the

fact that it had already attracted pulpwood companies and sawmills to harvest the old growth

trees (1939:4). Others considered timber to be “the most profitable crop we can grow” in the

region (Dennis 1939:4). An estimated three hundred million feet of timber would have to be

146 cleared and carried out of the basin (The Land Owners 1939:12-II). From a forestry standpoint,

Sprunt wonders whether South Carolina could afford to lose future timber growing capacity in the area by inundating the land (as cited in Kauffman 1939:10).

Others regarded the beauty of the forests as part of their intrinsic value. In this respect, the “magnificent” and “marvelous” trees were cherished elements of the basin landscape. Mrs.

Elliott Hutson expressed her concern over the “countless acres of virgin oaks and cedars” that were being cut down and burned (1940:2). Videau L. Beckwith Kirk described one scene at a plantation being cleared, testifying that around some of the basin homes, the trees as “old and beautiful friends, have been felled before their eyes” (1940:4). The protesters lamented the loss of the ancient and lovely trees that brought monetary, ecological, and aesthetic value to the

Lowcountry. Once again, the basin’s features, such as particular trees, and scale, in the case of acres of land, are noted to contain irreplaceable value.

The potential loss of wildlife to Santee Cooper’s destruction devastated hunters who enjoyed the Santee basin lands as hunting grounds. The proposed clearing and inundation of the land threatened duck hunting, a popular sport in the region. Several nature-minded readers of the

Charleston papers requested Alexander Sprunt, Jr., a renowned state naturalist who wrote a daily

“Woods and Waters” column in the Charleston papers, to give his opinion as to whether or not

Santee Cooper would be “fine for ducks.” He weighed in on the matter with this unequivocal statement:

The Santee project will ruin far more excellent duck grounds already extant than it ever will provide new ones. Parts of the lower Santee River today constitute some of the finest wildfowl country in the eastern United States, but it is inevitable that it will be comparatively deserted after the dams are in operation (1939:4).

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The more detailed reason Sprunt gave was that the food supply would no longer exist to support a population of “river ducks.” These ducks require “such plants as widgeon grass, sago pondweed, banana water-lily and others” that would not thrive with the varying water levels making up the new reservoirs. He did admit, however, that the lakes would serve as a rest area for the ducks (Sprunt 1939:4). Recreational hunter Nicholas Roosevelt protested to Senator

James Byrnes that the power development would destroy valuable property that was largely being used for duck shooting (Roosevelt 1934:1). Other wealthy landowners, particularly those who had formed hunting clubs in the region and maintained wildfowl-attracting land along the

Santee and Cooper Rivers, protested the loss of their hunting grounds.

Finally, several of the protesting documents noted that the course and composition of the

Santee River would be irrevocably altered as a result of the Santee Cooper hydroelectric project.

Not only would the flow of the Santee River be diminished by the two dams placed across it, but

much of the flow would also be diverted into a canal. Rutledge, a large landowner along the

Santee River in nearby McClellanville, wanted to remind the state’s citizens that the mighty

Santee River, “the largest river in the eastern United States,” would be “practically dried for the

last fifty miles of its course” (1939:4). Saltwater incursion might travel as much as thirty miles

inland, killing fresh water vegetation and animal life (Rutledge 1939:4). Below the Wilson and

Pinopolis dams, “salt water and mud banks” would result (T. C. Lucas 1939:4). The protesters

estimated that damage would occur to property downstream of the dams, but they could not

easily seek compensation from the Authority (“Santee” 1940:4). In the opinion of R. M. Doar of

Georgetown, South Carolina, the Authority did not consider the plight of people living along the

lower Santee regarding the resulting expenses or damages to their property (1939:4). These

property owners wanted reassurance that the government and the South Carolina Public Service

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Authority would reimburse them for the agricultural and economic losses to their lands. Thus,

the schema of nature was a powerful theme that protesters used to decry Santee Cooper’s

proposed destruction of trees, wildlife, and regional hydraulic features. The protesters valued nature not only for its intrinsic and ecological worth, but also because it was a source of economic stability in the form of timber and of recreation in the form of hunting of ducks and other wildlife.

Fighting with Words – The Two Sides of the Debate

The schemas employed by the groups make it clear that they employed particular

discourse strategies to accomplish certain goals. The promoters aimed to create the Santee

Cooper project, whereas the protesters intended to stop it. To do this, they employed particular

strategies and drew upon cultural understandings of certain phenomena to persuade people to

support their views. These cultural understandings included the cognitive views of landscape

based on meaning, features, and scale. The writers invoked different characteristics of the

landscape to create their arguments both for and against Santee Cooper.

This brief section addresses how each group used words to respond to the arguments, and

thus the schemas, of the opposing side. For the promoters, the schema of industrial progress

combined with an urgent need for defense was the justification for the massive project. They

viewed the landscape almost solely in terms of meaning, and that meaning was economic

progress. For the protesters, the schema of destruction (of homes, land, nature, and livelihood)

coupled with a schema of anti-government distrust was the ruling model. The schemas of the

opposition more clearly articulated aspects of the landscape that they were familiar with, such as

the scale of the proposed destruction and the historical, personal, and natural features of the basin

149 lands. Since each group had its own articulated agenda, it was not very often that the writers addressed the concerns of other side explicitly.

The promoters occasionally admitted to the destruction of the homes and the land, but they ultimately dismissed the protesters as being in the way of progress. Several of the writers

(six) promoting the project acknowledged that the land and homes would be destroyed. Losing the homes and land was, however, simply a corollary of economic development for one employee of Santee Cooper. He said it was “better to destroy the homes that unfortunately stand in the area to be inundated than to destroy the chances and opportunities of thousands of people who, even more unfortunately, stand idle today” (“An Employe[sic]” 1939:4). Frank Lawrence was aware of the adversity faced by the people living in the basin, “but in the interest of the people as a whole, some of the hardships and injustices” are an unpleasant effect of the “the march of progress” (1939:4). Progress, in other words, included a “necessary evil” in the sacrifice of some people for the benefit of many. Haws realized the suffering in his consideration of the loss of homes through condemnation:

Looking at the project from the view-point[sic] of some landowners, it is a sad situation. Some homes will be flooded. Some lands and locations with all their intimate associations will have to be sold and abandoned. In such cases, most liberal cash compensations will doubtless be awarded. Money many not fully sover [sic] compensation. Sentiment and feelings are not measured by that yardstick. This just happens to be one of the contributions of the citizen to his government. The right of condemnation often works hardships on the individual but it is one of the necessary requirements of society. The interests and desires of the individual must bow to the necessities and even to the whims and mistakes of the government (1939:4).

How did the promoters of Santee Cooper contradict these justifiable concerns of the people in the basin? They countered with what they considered to be the “inevitability” of the project.

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The project’s momentum, owing to its federal support from the New Deal administration and the more than $40,000,000 in promised monetary backing, meant progress would happen “in spite of hell or highwater [sic]” (McDonald 1941:A-6). The supporters also defended their position by pointing out that the people voted the politicians into office, a fact that gave them the right to create major economic development for the state as they saw fit. Because of that massive economic and political momentum, any single person was powerless to stop the destruction of land and homes.

The promoters wanted everyone, even the opposition, to support the project. A few promoters assailed the project’s critics for creating an “antagonistic attitude” in the community

(Poulnot 1939:1). The promoters also wanted the protesters to be aware that the region could only enjoy economic benefits once Santee Cooper reached completion. “An Employe(sic)” of the Santee Cooper attacked the critics of the development with the following statement:

If this project is never completed, and thousands of people are thrown out of work, are left to starve, to eke out an existence, or are forced into exile in other states, will you [. . . ] stand ready to answer for the deplorable condition that will ensue? (1939:4).

A few promoters answered the opposition’s assessment of wildlife destruction as a result of the project. Replying to reports that the United States Biological Survey Director “Ding”

Darling was opposed to the Santee Cooper project because it would endanger wildlife, James

Byrnes stated that his opponent “is interested in the welfare of his ‘wild life‘ more than he is interested in the welfare of human beings” (1934:1). He further criticized the Director’s statement as being based on the beliefs of “a few wealthy sportsmen, who belong to hunting clubs in South Carolina and fear that as a result of this great development there will be fewer ducks for them to kill” (1934:1). For James Byrnes and other promoters, the economic benefits of the project trumped the need to preserve wildlife in the region.

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Other promoters were upset by how the protesters depicted them in the press. “An

Employe[sic]” believed it exceedingly unfair that the Santee Cooper officials were being called

“uncivilized” and “unmerciful” and that they were being likened to foreign dictators (1939:4). In a few cases, the promoters, too, practiced name-calling, some going so far as to call protesters communists who were engaged in “dangerous fifth-columnism” (Frain 1942:4). It is interesting that persons representing both sides of the debate called the other side “communists.”

The protesters, for their part, resented the characterization of themselves as selfish and overly emotional. Henry Ravenel Dwight remarked that the South Carolina Public Service

Authority held itself to be “superior to such sentimental and unbusinesslike attitudes” as held by the landowners of the basin (Dwight 1935:5-B). These authors also resented that the dissenting statements of the landowners were “termed sentimental twaddle” by the promoters of Santee

Cooper (Mrs. Elliot Hutson 1941:3). As to the charge of selfishness, Dwight had this to say: “It is assumed that ‘selfishness’ consists in the desire to keep one’s home, lands, church, and burial grounds, instead of being a willing exile to any place the authority deems proper” (1935:5-B).

Along with the anguish of losing their homes and land, many of the dispossessed landowners expressed bitterness and resentment toward the government. The government considered neither their emotional attachment to their homes and land nor the historic value. Neither did the government compensate owners for these concerns in the prices they paid for the lands in the basin.

The protesters took umbrage at the Authority’s claims that the Santee Cooper project would bring progress and prosperity to the state. They directly criticized this claim of progress.

As stated earlier in this chapter, the protesters did not believe in the promoters’ assertions that

South Carolina needed electrical power to spur development. Nor did they believe that industry

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would proliferate in the Lowcountry. For them, the argument that the Santee Cooper project was

going to bring progress and industry to the region was unconvincing. For Dwight, the promoters

did not satisfactorily give “a single explanation” of how the benefits would arise from Santee

Cooper (Dwight 1935:5-B). Often, as I have noted before, the protesters contradicted the facts and figures the promoters used to bolster their case.

These local residents acknowledged their own efforts to fight the development in several

ways. The Land Owners of the Santee-Cooper basin resented the claim of progress and advantages to the state, and asked rhetorically, “Have not the benefits from this project been built up in the public mind by propaganda rather than by any factual demonstration of benefit?”

(1939:12-II). Leize Palmer Gaillard of Springfield plantation called progress an “insatiable monster,” taking the beautiful homes and land of St. John’s Berkeley to “be submerged by the muddy waters of the Santee” (1938:14). While recognizing that people should not stand in the way of progress and human benefit, W. P. Gourdin argued that in the case of Santee Cooper,

“the benefits to the state have not been proven and the destruction has not been balanced against the alleged benefits” (1939:4). Margaretta Childs offered to support the “local belligerent opposition” by organizing persons in Washington, D. C. to persuade politicians there to oppose the South Carolina project (1935:4). It was also rumored that the people working for the main contractor, the Harza Company, said that they would not have accepted the job had they known the amount of bitter and angry local opposition to the project (Mrs. Elliot Hutson 1940:3). The landowners countered the claims of progress with a strong belief that the supporters of Santee

Cooper had not adequately reckoned the high costs of the project that the basin dwellers would

have to pay.

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Summary

In their fight the protesters argued over the meaning of the Santee basin in a separate

cultural model that contained several important schemas. The major schema, as the most widely

shared and most thoroughly discussed, was their claim that Santee Cooper would destroy their homes, land, and way of life. “Destruction” was the single main keyword appearing in the most

documents to describe what the basin residents and the protesters perceived would happen to the

region. It is important to note that this schema acknowledges the role of progress while

countering it directly. Many sub-levels of schemas supported and were embedded in the

overarching schema of destruction. The lower-level schemas described people’s own experience

with the landscape by living in it or having frequented the basin area. Most of the protesters had

first-hand knowledge of the man-made and natural features of the basin landscape as well as a

sense of its scale. The meaning of these features endowed the landscape with emotional significance. The loss of homes as well as other landmarks that bestowed a sense of place to the area, such as the historical significance, the beauty, and the ancestral graves, caused mental anguish to the protesters, who expressed their bitterness and resentment toward the government’s condemnation process that took their land away from them. In addition, they were angry over the destruction of nature and the ecological characteristics of the unique Santee watershed.

Another way in which the protesters fought the dominant cultural model of progress of

the Santee Cooper supporters was by claiming that the project would not happen. One strategy

the protesters employed was to cast doubt on the project by saying that it would never be

completed. Additionally, they claimed that it was feasible neither economically nor from an

engineering standpoint. The protesters also disbelieved the promoters’ assertions of economic

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benefits and growth of industry that Santee Cooper would confer on the region. In the minds of

the protesters, the government’s claims of progress were empty and detrimental.

A second major but related schema in the cultural model of the protesters was one of anti-

government sentiment. The protesters invoked an outraged sense of injustice based on their ideals of freedom and democracy. The Santee Cooper project and its destruction threatened their personal constitutional rights of life, land, and liberty.

As I have discussed in the past two chapters, both sides battled in the press over the

meaning and use of the vast Santee Cooper basin. Values clashed over the determination of the

future landscape based on how the two groups of people cognized the landscape’s meaning,

features, and scale. The promoters used the dominant cultural idea of progress to bolster their

arguments. Progress is the apex of the cultural model of the Santee Cooper development. With

the model of embedded schemas and logic, the supporters of Santee Cooper sought to convince

the public of the project’s economic and material benefits for the people of South Carolina. The

protesters developed their argument that the cost of progress was too high. For them, the

corollary of progress was the wholesale destruction of land and a way of life. Not only would

there be devastation of land, homes, emotional ties, and nature, but also an erosion of personal

liberty in the face of a dominant government power.

Over the next few chapters, I present the results of the oral history interviews of the

Santee Cooper project. These chapters elucidate the short-term and long-term benefits of the

project, the destruction of the land, and how the participants remembered and interpreted this

major event over time. Their life experiences in the changing Santee basin landscape and its repercussions provide them with multiple viewpoints from which they expressed their recollections of the project as well as their reflections on the nature of change and progress over

155 time. Their memories and reflections of the basin landscape and its changes create new meanings negotiated by time and a shift in identity for people who once had close ties to the land.

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CHAPTER 5

A LANDSCAPE OF THE PAST: BERKELEY COUNTY IN THE 1930S

Historical Ethnography

The task of oral history is to seek recollections from people who remember a specific event. Such an opportunity to find people who had personal experiences with the building of

Santee Cooper enriches the study of that landscape-altering event. I was not only seeking the participants’ “objective” recollections and personal stories, however, but also their reflections, which are their subjective and emotional opinions of past events as the participants experienced them (Moss 1977). With this endeavor, I was able to understand not only the sequence and magnitude of events but also what those events meant to the participants’ lives. Through their words and viewpoints, I could evaluate the history of the Santee Cooper development from their views of the past as altered by the passage of time

To reiterate my research questions, I wanted to uncover the most salient or important parts of local landscapes to the people who inhabited them. I also wanted to retrieve vivid impressions of life before, during, and after the project, and how the massive hydroelectric project has affected the inhabitants’ lives in the past and in the present. I asked these persons to reach back into their pasts and share part of their lives and identities with me. Not only was I relying on their memories but also on what they were willing to share with me, an outsider.

Even though I came armed with nine months of archival research and a knowledge of timelines, events, and figures about the Santee Cooper development, not until after the first several interviews was I able to realize the true significance of, accurately interpret, and genuinely understand the project’s impact on this section of Berkeley County. Only through these interviews was I able to meaningfully and authentically reconstruct the history of the project.

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I had chosen the interviewees by asking townspeople who would have remembered the

construction of Santee Cooper. I received lots of leads this way, but those leads became circular

by the end of my research: many interviewees referenced people I had already met, so I

interviewed those people or talked to their family members. In some cases, persons were not well enough to be interviewed during my stay, so I sought others. The average age of the forty interviewees was eighty, meaning that most of them were born around the year 1924. The range of ages was from sixty-eight (born in 1936) to ninety-one (born in 1913). The youngest participants did not have as many memories as little children of Santee Cooper, but they

remembered vividly the aftermath and their parents’ impressions of and feelings about the

project. Twenty-four interviewees were men (sixty percent of the total), and sixteen were

women (forty percent of the total). Ethnically, thirty-one members of the group (77.5%) were

white, of European-American descent, and nine (22.5%) were of African American descent.

The smaller number of African American participants in my sample is indicative of the

difficulty I had in finding enough African American informants willing to talk to me. Many

seemed reticent to discuss the past, particularly its unpleasant parts. Many African American

family members were also protective of their elders. For example, several interviewees or

younger people would mention that another person knew a great deal about the subject I wanted

to discuss, but that this elderly person could not participate because he resided in a nursing home,

was in poor health, or should not be bothered. My attempts to locate and speak with African

American persons old enough to remember Santee Cooper’s construction did not often lead to

interviews.

Within the data analysis, their responses to the oral history interview questions did not

appear decisively affected by the interviewees’ demographic backgrounds, whether gender,

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ethnic, or age. In ethnography, however, the relationship between researcher and informant is

inherently biased because of the set of predispositions and assumptions that humans often have

about other people. The reaction of an interviewee to a researcher based on personal characteristics of the investigator is one of the many sources of bias in ethnography (Schensul et al. 1999:144). In view of this, I cannot ignore that my being a young white female graduate student might have influenced the participants’ responses to my questions. The data I collected may reflect this bias.

Another issue of ethnographic research is that of observer effects, which recognizes that

the presence of a researcher, including his phrasing or the types of questions he asks, can

influence or change respondents’ behavior (Schensul et al. 1999:282). Because of my personal

characteristics and the nature of the questions I posed, the interviewees may have told me what

they thought I wanted to hear. For instance, they may have omitted parts of painful past events

to make them sound less upsetting in their recounting, or they may have answered certain

questions more politely than accurately. In other cases, they may have been protecting their

families, their sources of information, or themselves.

The issue of inherent ethnographic bias is also significant in differences in ethnicity,

especially given the sometimes tenuous ethnic relations and tense racial history in rural parts of

the South Carolina Lowcountry. Since I had some trouble recruiting African Americans

interviewees, my sample of African American participants is limited. Similarly, I do not know

how these participants might have responded differently to my questions if I too had been

African American. With such a small group of respondents and a dearth of extant primary texts

expressing the views of African Americans from the basin, I was unfortunately not able to

discover much of the African American reality regarding the Santee Cooper project. Based on

159 such a small sample, I do not wish to generalize the entire African American experience of

Santee Cooper, so the descriptions contained herein should be read with this qualification of the data in mind.

When I explained to Berkeley County residents that I was researching an oral history perspective of Santee Cooper, a frequent comment I heard was, “You’re ten years too late!”

Many people who had experienced the development of Santee Cooper were no longer living, so part of my quest became finding people of an advanced age who did remember its occurrence, even if they were young at the time. This particular generation of interviewees offered a unique perspective of the Santee Cooper landscape that none other would be able to provide. While I chose this sample because they were able to remember the basin before Santee Cooper and the construction of the large project, this group was young at the time. Because they were mostly teenagers at the time Santee Cooper was built, their particular viewpoint arose from experiencing such enormous social and landscape change at a young age. Because I could not interview their parents’ generation, which would have provided an entirely different set of opinions, reflections, and recalled experiences, the data is partly limited to the viewpoint of a certain generation.

As my interviewees were young during the Santee Cooper development, their generational viewpoints shape the study in a certain way. First, they were more heavily influenced by the major events of the twentieth century, including World War II, the spread of electricity, and modernization. Second, these participants were part of a generation that society characterizes today as being morally industrious. For example, they are frequently referred to as

“The Greatest Generation” for living through the Depression, sacrificing during World War II, birthing the baby boomers, and producing the post-war economic boom that created the prosperity, wealth, and influence that we associate with the United States. The interviewees

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from this generation, therefore, account for a wholesale shift in identity from one of rural

farmers, tied to the land, to one of wage earners, living in a contemporary economy where people

move to find work. Such a change of relationship to the land is part of the “New South,” the

post-civil rights era characterized by increased urbanization, a lesser dependence on agriculture,

and an absence of de jure segregation (Baer and Jones 1992). The moderate shift to

delocalization transformed this generation’s identity in still another way because families in the

basin had often traced their heritage through several generations, many of whom occupied the

same lands. These shifts in identity are negotiated by their lived experiences as well as by the

dominant cultural values they encountered by becoming more integrated into a modern, fast-

paced, and information-based society.

Today’s Berkeley County, the largest county by land area in the state, has an estimated

population of 151,673, according to the 2005 United States Census Bureau estimates (2006).

While the town of Moncks Corner, population of 5,952 according to the United States Census of

2000 (2006), acted as my home base, I often found myself on the road visiting people to interview in the nearby, less populated communities of Cross, St. Stephen, Jamestown, and

Pineville. I tried to follow directions that frequently involved locating landmarks instead of more precise markers like measured distances and street numbers. A participant would say,

“You pass that white house, then the tree with the eagle in it, then there’s [So-and-so’s] house.

You can’t miss it.” Not being from these parts, I often found these directions hard to follow, sometimes driving back and forth and up and down the roads, passing several white houses, and then finally using my cell phone to sheepishly ask, “I can’t find your house. Can you please tell me where again?” What a feeble first impression to make!

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I began my interviews by asking the participants about their lives. Stories of marriage,

children (and loss of children, the most sorrowful part), work, military service, and other

memorable events marked their life histories. Some were equipped with funny or fond

anecdotes; others answered by reflecting on what was important to them then. Some were

excited just to talk about Santee Cooper from the start. I asked about what life was like in the

area before Santee Cooper came along, and how Santee Cooper changed the course of history for

themselves and for the region. Then I posed questions pertinent to the features of the project, the

relocation of families, the landscape, and their perceptions about how Santee Cooper has

transformed their lives and Berkeley County.

To obtain the interview data in a practicable manner, I focused on the lower lake,

Moultrie, which is entirely within the Berkeley County perimeter, and specifically on Moncks

Corner and its surroundings. Because I did not focus on the upper lake, Marion, I did not visit

the other counties, such as Orangeburg, Sumter, or Clarendon, that were affected by the Santee

Cooper project. I seek to describe this region of the lower lake around the time of Santee Cooper

and the impact of the project on the people and the nearby towns of Berkeley County. The cultural model of the Santee Cooper landscape history is driven by the responses I received from the set of people I interviewed. Within this framework of participant data, I insert historical documentation to further describe and understand what life was like then. As anthropologists and oral historians recommend, I use this documentation to validate facts, countering the fallibility of human memory. In this section of the dissertation, I integrate my ethnographic research with historical documentation to reinforce, deepen, and make more vivid the data. In other words, I don’t discretely analyze the ethnographic interviews.

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To protect the identities of the participants in my research, I have changed their names in

this dissertation as required by the University of Georgia Institutional Research Board. While

many of my participants would be proud to claim ownership of what they said, the requirements

of the university preclude this acknowledgement. For each name that I have changed, I have

placed an asterisk beside each name the first time I record it. In the case of the experts who were

consulted for this dissertation, however, including local historians, professors, and a few

employees of Santee Cooper, I use their real names to give them credit for their professional

knowledge.

The responses from the participants drive the following cultural model of the history of the Santee Cooper project in the Berkeley County area. To introduce this cultural model of landscape change, I integrated the salient and shared themes into a broader model of landscape change for the area. In the first section, I describe how people remember the lifestyle and landscape of Berkeley County in the 1930s; in the second, how people remember the clearing and construction era of the large hydroelectric project and its impact on the town and social life.

The loss of homes and land and the people’s resettlement stories and their long-term views of the past upheaval make up the following chapter. Finally, I describe the long-term effects of Santee

Cooper, such as its place in the contemporary community and its importance as a recreation area.

In the conclusion, I evaluate the findings of the textual analysis and the oral history ethnography

with a view to what environmental change means to people who both anticipated and lived

through it.

Memory, both collective and individual, shapes the discourse from the interviewees as

they talked about their personal experience within the framework of a major event of social and

landscape change. The notion of remembering can be used by anthropologists, states Garro, “to

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further an exploration of interrelationships among cognitive processes, personal knowledge,

cultural understandings, and social contexts” (2000:278). Shared cultural models may serve as a

form of collective memory yet provide for degrees of variation among individuals (Garro 2000).

The study of schemas within cultural models in combination with the employment of the politics

of memory encompasses these goals.

The answers I received in response to my open-ended questions about Santee Cooper and

the past are notable for the narrative quality they developed. This finding is in agreement with

an early anthropological study of memory that revealed that past experiences and events tend to

be reported in gestalt-like wholes (Bartlett 1935). My interviewees did not recount their personal

histories by simply recounting chronological sequences of events. Rather, they provided certain

personal anecdotes that were interspersed with their reflections on the personal meaning of these

life experiences. Often, these memories took on an emotional character, since “acts of memory

and sites of memory are inevitably evocative – marked by expressions and ideologies of emotion

that convey something about the salience of past events for persons recalling them” (White

2006:332). From within these jumbled narratives, salient events emerged that appear central to

the experience of those who remember the Santee Cooper project.

Variation among the interviewees was not generally divided among age, sex, or even ethnicity. The results were more clearly bifurcated, however, among two distinct groups: those

who did not have to sell their land to Santee Cooper (twenty-three of the forty informants) and

those whose land or homes were purchased by Santee Cooper (seventeen of the forty

informants). A more detailed discussion of this may be found in Chapter Seven.

For the purposes of cultural models, the oral history data is rather unwieldy, but clear

patterns emerged. These patterns point to shared salience of certain events and attributes of both

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the Santee basin landscape and the project itself. The participants also took a “longue durée”

approach to the region’s history by considering the habitation of the basin from colonial

settlements to the present. How do these schemas relate to cultural meaning? Strauss and Quinn

state that “meanings are the product of current events in the public world interacting with mental

structures” (1997:6). For my purpose, then, it is useful to uncover the schemas to provide a

framework for the understanding of how memories, in the form of schemas, confer meaning to

past events.

The collective memories of the participants contain both social and historical influences

and individual memories. The memories the participants shared with me are influenced by past

and current times and reflect not only what is important in each participant’s personal life but

also some of the significant social and political trends. Halbwachs notes that the “past is not

preserved but reconstructed on the basis of the present” (1992:40). Memories are negotiated, and

in some respects co-opted, by dominant cultural values that tend to squash divergent viewpoints,

especially politically-unpopular opinions. The opposing views of the government expansion of

costly New Deal infrastructure projects are now forgotten because a primary narrative of United

States history is that of Roosevelt’s New Deal bringing the country out of the Great Depression.

Over the course of the New Deal, people opposed New Deal works based on different reasons.

In the case of Santee Cooper, people decried the “march of progress” because they would lose

their homes and land within the Santee basin landscape.

The participants’ links to the land, their families, and their communities centralize the

notion of identity within this chapter. First of all, the setting of the Santee basin landscape conferred an identity unique to the Lowcountry because of social ties, distinct environmental attributes, and local history. Second, many Berkeley County residents were farmers so benefited

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from their relationship to the land that provided their living. Third, a strong sense of nostalgia arose from the process of social enculturation that the residents remember from their formative years; this process instilled certain values and morals that the interviewees still hold closely to

today. The enormous social and landscape changes that Santee Cooper wrought help account for

a shift from a more traditional, rural-based identity to a more modern, urbanized one. The rest of this chapter presents the schemas of the participants regarding what life was like before Santee

Cooper came and their views and memories of the Santee basin landscape.

Life in the 1930s, Berkeley County

Berkeley County, with a population of 22,236 in 1930 (Baskin 1958), was a rural county.

Its county seat, Moncks Corner, had a population of only 623 in the 1930s, with thirty-six

percent being white (224 persons) and sixty-four percent being African American (398 persons).

Other nearby communities were populated in the 1930s as follows: Pinopolis, four miles from

Moncks Corner, 115 persons; Macbeth, five miles north of Moncks Corner, population sixty; St.

Stephens, population 910; and Bonneau, population 179 (Dwight n.d(a):1-2). It is important to

note that the town of Moncks Corner was near the basin but not in it. The basin itself was mostly

rural, containing wetlands, forests, farms, and small communities. Pinopolis and MacBeth were

towns on the edge of the basin.

So what was life like then for this section of Berkeley County, including the basin area

that was to soon be flooded? For most people responding to this question, it was “tough” or

“rough.” They often responded with a chuckle. “Nobody had anything,” they would say. “You

didn’t have two nickels you could rub together.” The region was noted to be a poor area,

especially since the price of most agricultural products fell thanks to the economic breakdown of

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the Depression and the earlier collapse of cotton following the boll weevil’s advent. With such a

moribund regional economy, life was difficult for everybody. More than thirty percent of the

population of Berkeley County at that time received government relief (Hayes 2001:40).

However, for most of these people growing up at that time, it didn’t matter much, since “you

didn’t know you were poor because everybody else was” (Clark*). Dale Green* reflected on the

poverty that his family and many others experienced:

Life was good, but we were all poor. I mean, no there wasn’t such thing as an inferiority complex ’cause everybody was the same, and there was a few people had a little somethin’, but everybody was on the same level. And it was just [ . . . ] you had things to eat, what there were, but that was it, and you lived off of the land. We fed the family with the corn, and grits and stuff, meal, and your garden, and you raised your own hogs and cows.

A consensus among the participants was that most people lived in a condition of poverty during

that time.

The participants declared that there were no jobs to be had in the area, and that it was

hard to make a dollar. There were few jobs, and those who were lucky enough to have salaried

jobs made wages of between twenty-five and fifty cents a day. Betty Parker* remembered that the only money flowing into the area was from the Yankees who came down to purchase plantations, mainly for hunting and recreation. The participants did not mention the existence of any industry in the town of Moncks Corner, but there was the Berkeley Barrel and Basket

Factory, with an output of 450,000 annually (in 1928) (Orvin 1950:52), and, according to Henry

Ravenel Dwight’s WPA report on the region in the 1930s, the Moncks Corner Lumber Company

produced ten thousand feet of rough lumber each day (Dwight, n.d.:1).

South Carolina’s income in 1939 was forty-fourth in the nation, at $298 per capita. This

level, at fifty percent below the national average, was cited as better than the previous levels of

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sixty-one percent below the national average in 1932 (The News and Courier 1940g:1). While

the school system or the postal service provided a few jobs, most families in the area farmed. If

people could raise a little bit of cotton, they could sell it, but otherwise, “you couldn’t sell

anything” (Hammond*). Farmers were subsidized by the Agricultural Adjustment

Administration for planting only a small amount of cotton, preventing the market from becoming

flooded and keeping the price of cotton high. However, some interviewees participated in

medium-scale farms that produced and sold a limited surplus. Kenneth Findlay* recalled that

neither tractors nor mechanized farm equipment was in use. Instead, he “plowed behind a mule

many a day.” Henry Davis* remembered his family farming about twenty-seven acres of land on

the edges of the Santee basin; they sowed a small amount of cotton on the better land because the

cotton allotment prevented them from planting more than a few acres per family. They also had

cow pasture and a place for the mules to graze, “because we didn’t have no horses.” People were lucky if they sold pigs for three cents a pound (on the hoof), and they received about ten dollars

for a five-hundred-pound calf when they had one to sell (Davis). Glenn Edwards* remembered

that his father raised many chickens and some hogs. Families fortunate enough to own livestock

would butcher the hogs, cure and smoke the meat, and then take the cured pork and chicken eggs

and drive to sell them to the small corner-store grocers.

Other families raised their own gardens or small crops and livestock on smaller, mainly

subsistence-level farms. Green explained that people “had the little farms that they made enough

to eat on.” These people didn’t own a great deal of land, just enough property to tend a limited

amount of livestock and grow vegetables like corn, potatoes, peas, beans, and peanuts. Corn was

popular as animal feed (and for some, as a primary ingredient in local whiskey manufacture).

Such subsistence farmers cared for some chickens, hogs, and a dairy cow or two.

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Other agricultural pursuits in the area included somewhat larger farms, a few dairy farms,

some timber agriculture, and turpentine manufacturing. Growing up on a family dairy, young

Daniel Evans* worked hard. He describes his daily routine, helping care for fifteen to twenty

dairy cows:

My life was getting up in the morning, milking cows, going to deliver the milk, come back home, go to school, get out of school, come home, milk cows, wash bottles, process milk, study, go to bed, get up the next morning. (Laughed)

Mary Nelson* also remembered getting up before school to milk the cows. One day, her elder

brother made her mad, and she squirted him in the face with the milk from the cow. She laughed

as she recalled her mischief.

Several sawmills in the area employed a few people. Local residents viewed timber as a

valued resource. The Camp Manufacturing Company was a timber company established in

Franklin, Virginia, with a local camp at Russellville to house and feed workers (Carroll 1941:3-

F). There was also a pulp wood mill in the former Wilton community where mules brought the

logs out of the woods to the mill (Richardson*). Charles Jones, Sr., owned a lumber company

near Moncks Corner that processed pines and hardwoods like oak, walnut, cedar, gum, maple

and poplar for the market in Charleston (The News and Courier 1941l:2-F). Non-wood products

also were extracted from the trees. Turpentine came from harvesting the sap of the abundant

pine trees. Julia Kennedy* recalled the messy sap dripping from the trees and said it was “so

pungent” that the smell would stay with a person after passing through a pine forest. Others recall seeing turpentine pits, which were holes dug in the ground in which turpentine makers would cook the pitch from the pine trees to make the strong substance.

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Most people shared a diet based on the local agriculture and lacking a variety of fresh

vegetables. Their staples were mainly milk, pork, and corn. Henry Davis explained his family’s

typical diet:

We had a milk cow. And that was basically the livelihood. The milk cow brought us good fresh milk. And have you ever heard of cornbread? Well, I can tell you all about that. (Laughed). But that cornbread and milk wasn’t a bad diet. (Laughed) And it was good.

Other dietary elements included grits (from corn) and common garden vegetables. Another man

remembered eating mostly fatback and “pure lard” which are “things they tell you not to eat

today!” (Green) The lunch he took to school, similar to that of his classmates, consisted of “a

big ol’ biscuit, a piece o’ ham, a fatback, and a sweet potato.” Some families who lacked

livestock would hunt or fish to provide protein for the family. Barbara Wilson* remembered that

her father made use of whatever game available, big or small, to “cook up any old thing” such as

squirrel perlau which he frequently made for his family of six children. She said she never could

understand how they had the money to afford the rice for the dish. Others mention eating the

fish they caught in nearby streams. With no refrigeration to preserve it, beef was a rarity, although a few people recall pickling their meat.

The diet in the region, heavy in pork and corn, notably contributed to cases of pellagra, a

niacin deficiency that can cause diarrhea, skin problems, and dementia (Moser 1939). The

Charleston Evening Post reported an estimated 75,000 people were suffering from it among

thirteen southern states in 1940, even though the death rate had declined about seventy percent

since 1928 (Charleston Evening Post 1940:A-4). Malnutrition due to lack of protein or other

nutrients was also a factor among the poor.

Some other indicators of hardships that the participants noted were related to shelter and

clothing. Many of the homes didn’t have glass windows, but they had shutters they closed at

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night when the weather got cold (Clark). Figure 5.1 is an example of a small farmhouse in the

basin with shutters on the window instead of glass. Many homes in the basin area were also in

various states of disrepair because their owners had neither money to fix them nor money to

build new houses. Clothes generally had to be made at home or carefully purchased with scarce

money and made to last. Green remembered getting one pair of shoes for the year, as well as a

few pair of pants that were worn the whole week during school. To complete the chores at

home, he would have to take off his school clothes and hang them up and put on his work

clothes. Another man remembered his father purchasing his clothes from a catalog twice a year,

because they lived so far away that they had difficulty getting to the store (Taylor*). To pay for

services such as doctor’s visits, such patients would often give farm products instead of cash.

Joseph Hammond* reminisced about doctors carrying a chicken coop on the sides of their cars,

since their patients sometimes paid them with chickens.

Other privations included the lack of electricity, plumbing, and water. In 1930, less than

three percent of South Carolina’s rural population had electricity (Brown 1998). Frequently,

inhabitants, even those who lived in or near town, had to pump water by hand outdoor and haul it to the house for drinking and cooking. Frances Bailey’s back yard had another pump the family used for bathing and washing clothes. Wendell Foster* remembered using water in a drum, heated by the sun, to take a shower outside after a day of plowing. Houses were heated mostly by fireplaces and woodstoves, requiring a large stockpile of hand-cut firewood. Lamps were fueled with oil or kerosene. Figure 5.2 shows an indoor room with a kerosene lantern. Several interviewees recall studying at night with the kerosene lamp turned down low to save fuel.

Others recall having carbolic lights, which were connected to each other with a gas line.

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Other household needs and chores reflected the era’s lack of electricity. If a family

possessed an icebox for food refrigeration, they would purchase ice and haul it home. For

families who could afford ice delivery, a truck came by several times a week, selling ice in

blocks of either twenty-five, fifty, or one hundred pounds. These families placed ice chipped off

such blocks inside their iceboxes and thus carefully preserved their food. Clothes were washed on a scrubbing board, but some families hired local women to perform this service.

Outdoor bathroom facilities, also called “outhouses” or “backhouses,” were standard in the area. The WPA was sent in to Berkeley County to help build privies on people’s properties.

Isabelle Carter* said the WPA workers would come in and put down a concrete slab with a hole

in it; “then they put you a little concrete thing down with a hole sit to sit, like a commode”

(Carter). Families were required to build their own wooden structure around the new facility

with a door for access. The use of outdoor facilities was associated with high levels of

hookworm disease in the South (Brown 1998). Indoor bathrooms were not common until after

electric pump facilities were available to pump water inside the houses.

A limited amount of electricity was available in the Berkeley County area, especially in

towns. Some of the interviewees recall having electricity before Santee Cooper came, supplied

by the barrel factory that manufactured mostly potato and whiskey barrels in town. The Delco

generator there was a large machine built over an underground furnace whose fire required

constant attending. The boilers produced steam that needed to be synchronized to avoid a

fluctuation in the power levels it produced. People paid to build their own lines from the factory

to their homes to bring in the electricity, and some noted that the uneven lighting would go up and down. Other people recall having a battery operated generator, which they called a “Delco plant.” One started such a generator by cranking it. The cranking charged the batteries and had

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to be performed about twice a day: “And when the light started dimming you had to go out and

get it started again” (Hill*). I was able to see an old Delco battery container, a large square glass jar with the words “Delco” on the side.

The roads were so poor in the area that they were hard to travel by mule and wagon, horse, car, or otherwise. They weren’t paved; most were just dirt. The roads were described as

bumpy like a washboard, made of dirt, red clay, and even sand in some areas. One had to cross

several creeks and streams on roads that were “rough, boggy and bushy” in certain sections

(Richardson). Sometimes the seasonal flooding of the Santee River or a big rain washed out

large sections of the roads. One interviewee remarked that the best way to travel across the basin

was with an ox and a cart (Davis), but horse and buggy was the most common mode of

transportation at that time. Cars were a novelty, so “if you heard a model A Ford coming up the

road, you ran out there to see it,” laughed Davis. Trucks were even rarer. Emma Lee* said that

transportation was at such a premium back in the 1930s that people would frequently share rides

to run errands:

A lot of people didn’t have a way to go, and they’d have to depend on others, to take them where they’d want to go. Or need to go. Like on Saturdays or Fridays to buy groceries. Of course they’d have to pay ’em to take them.

Bill Anderson remembered the first roads paved around Moncks Corner, one of them being the road that connected Moncks Corner to Pinopolis. Maxwell Orvin, in his book, wrote that the first paving of Main Street occurred in 1929 (1950). Transportation and the local roads would soon be affected by the coming of the Santee Cooper project.

The condition of the roads also dictated how the public school system (for whites) was

managed. Roads were so difficult to traverse daily that those students too far from the high

school to walk lived there in a dormitory located in town. White people from the country who

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couldn’t get back and forth on the roads would send their children to stay all week in the

dormitory and come home on the weekends. There was one dormitory for the boys and one for

the girls. The author of a news article claimed that Berkeley County’s dormitory system was the

only county public school system in the nation that housed and fed its students at the school for

free (Ayers 1941: 2-F).

In rural sections around Berkeley County, some primary schools, each taught by a single

teacher, were placed every few miles or so apart so that students could walk to school. One

interviewee noted that boys often walked barefoot to school until about seventh grade (King*).

The town of Moncks Corner possessed a larger primary school as well as the high school that

provided dormitories for students who lived away from town. The old Berkeley High School,

formerly located on the corner of the corner of Main Street and Highway 17A in the middle of

town, featured such activities as football and band. Because the main public school system was

all white, African American families enrolled their children in local church-sponsored schools or

underfunded public schools, such as the Cherry Hill or DuBose schools nearby.

Schoolchildren in the rural sections had to balance the demands of their education with

the obligations of their farm chores. When planting and harvesting season came, many of the

young students had to leave school to help their families, since there was no other help.

Kenneth Findlay* recalled having to repeat a grade because he missed over thirty days in one

year because of tending the family farm. Instead of being taken by their parents, children were

usually enrolled for the first day of school with the help of a sibling or neighbor. The interviewees also remember the discipline carried out at the school. A person had to behave himself, or else he “got tore up” by the teacher. Dale Green notes:

There was discipline in school, I mean, that was it. They had the right to bop you in the head or whatever they wanted to do. I mean,

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you’d never be abused, but boy, they would tear you up. If that didn’t teach you and if you were ever sent to the principal, that was worse. But, you knew how to behave, and you knew who how to respect, and you was taught to respect people and property.

Another former student of Berkeley County said that “you studied and you did what [the teacher]

told you to do, yessiree!” (Randolph*). The interviewees thought that the strictness of their

schoolteachers and parents helped develop their tolerance for hard work.

The African American Population

The experiences of African Americans in the Santee basin were in some ways similar to

those of whites: rampant poverty and self-sufficient agriculture characterized the condition of

many families. Some significant differences, however, account for many African Americans’

economic and societal marginalization. These circumstances were based on the relative

subordinate position and a lack of opportunities for African Americans. First, they did not have

the same access to many of the jobs available to whites. African Americans’ participation on the

government relief rolls in 1935 was at sixty-seven percent of the amount allotted to Berkeley

County, a figure that reflects the proportion of the black population at that time (Hayes 2001:49).

An African American himself, Miller* recalled that people in the basin “had a hard way to go”

during these economically tough times. Many of the young African American men sought work

in the timber camps at Russellville and at other camp sites for employment. They generally had

to travel some distance from their homesteads for these strenuous and dangerous jobs.

Dwelling place is another difference that characterized the experience of many African

Americans living in the basin: they typically lived in the more remote parts, the marginal areas most likely to be considered “swamp” by outsiders. Stewart noted the propensity of African

American slaves to occupy these secluded swampy areas from the earliest plantation days of rice

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culture along the Southeastern coast. Even after they were freed from slavery, African

Americans often remained in these areas. He considers their decision to occupy the bushy

swamps purposeful and ingenious, since the African Americans found value in these wetlands in the form of subsistence and autonomy (1996). In this landscape they were able to retain some of

their long-held habits and agricultural practices from the African continent, such as the

cultivation of rice for their own consumption, their food preferences, and some of their oral traditions. While they inhabited many malarial areas, some of them were immune to the parasites by virtue of genetic predisposition (in combination with an allele that causes sickle-cell disease in red blood cells); for others, repeated exposure built their immunity.

In this landscape, the African American population tended to occupy less arable and

smaller plots of land, often as tenant farmers. A few African American families in the basin,

however, accumulated properties of large acreage that they farmed with success. African

Americans in Berkeley County were also more likely to remain near or inhabit the lands of the

former plantations that many of the whites had already left. The names of these former

plantation sites continued as the place-names of the communities in which small groups of

African American families lived. Frierson was one such example, as a former plantation that

became known as a small African American community in a remote area of the basin. Other

communities in the basin inhabited mainly by African American residents included Cedar Hill,

Brownsville, Black Oak, Ferguson, and Spiers Landing. These small communities often had

local churches, stores, and sometimes schools.

Most of the African Americans engaged in small-scale farming for subsistence. They

made use of their intimate knowledge of vegetable plants, cultivating garden crops like corn,

potatoes, peas, beans, and peanuts. Alice Richardson recalled that her family also planted rice in

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the wet portion of the land not far from the old Santee Canal. When I asked her if they planted

the rice as surplus to sell, she exclaimed, “Oh, no! We planted so we didn’t have to buy it! We were blessed to make our [own] food.” She also remembered her mother growing enough

vegetables and eggs to sell to the local timber camp. Most African American families had little

or no machinery with which to work their farms, but most owned a mule or two (Taylor*).

In addition to farming land, many of the African American families used the swamp to

supplement their livelihood. Those with cattle and pigs would leave them to graze in the swamp

during the winter (the livestock would seek dry land as the spring floods inundated the area).

People planted the wet ground of the swamp with rice and sugar cane to feed mules. Alice

Richardson explained her family’s use of the swamp and the old Santee Canal to grow rice:

Some land is wet land, and we had on the farm, you know, we had wet land, and then we had sandy land. We would plant the rice in the wet land, ’cause the rice would have to have water, and I guess not living far from the canal, that may have helped, you know, to plant the rice on wet land.

Thus living in or near the basin swamp enabled many African American families to carve out a

viable existence.

Some of the poorest people, both white and African American, worked as tenant farmers.

In some areas these sharecroppers helped pick cotton off other people’s land for wages.

Raymond Clark* said the poorest people of Berkeley County at that time lived from hand-to- mouth, “off the generosity of the landowner” where they “worked the crops for food and housing

until the point in time the crops came in and then there would be some division of monies.”

With only tiny farm plots or untenable land, they were considered on the edge of starvation, barely scratching out an existence. Tragically, starvation claimed at least two lives in the

Pineville community in 1932 (Hayes 2001:8). The government responded to the hunger crisis by

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sending out a food wagon to the most indigent people with rice, flour, and other staples that were

stored in a warehouse near Moncks Corner. A few persons recalled the food wagon bringing

supplies to help families in the community.

Moncks Corner: Cattle, Liquor, and Politics

Many of my interviewees described the town of Moncks Corner as being similar to the way the “Wild West” was depicted in movies (Figure 5.3 and 5.4 depict 1930s era Moncks

Corner). Part of this uncivilized reputation came from the free-roaming cattle near town.

George Adams* explained that the woods on the Cross side of town were “burnt all the time,” and “you could see half a mile through those woods, and they did that on account of cattle.” The cattle owners allowed their livestock to graze in the area from what is today Highway 176 to the community of Cross. He further describes his cowboy days:

Yeah, I’ve been out there with them, [riding] a horse out there and help ’em get cows up, you know, and drive ’em back in and pen ’em up and . . . each one of ’em had a mark in their ear. They had the old mark, a swallowfork, a key, a “L,” a “M,” and they cut that in their ear. They had a brand, a knife that would . . . slam down on that cow’s ear and that cut an M in it just like it would anything else. It would bleed a little bit, but it never hurt ’em.

The town also bordered nearby National Forest lands where cattle had free range, and the area

was marked with a sign notifying people that they were entering an open stock cattle range.

Remembered Raymond Clark, “If you ran over a fellow’s cow or hog on the road or mule, you

had to pay ’em. The animals had the right, and people had the right, that’s how remote and rural

it was.” It was Clifford Martin’s* job after school each day on horseback to round up his

family’s cattle from the free range.

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The “wild west” nature of Moncks Corner in the 1930s also owed thanks to a decidedly

darker side of life: corn liquor and the dirty politics that ensued. When I asked one man about

what life was like in the thirties, he responded with, “Darlin’, you want me to tell you the truth?

Our main industry was moonshine whiskey!” (Green). Prohibition started in 1920, and this increased the demand for black-market “Berkeley Corn,” the moonshine made in backwoods

stills. In such desperate economic times, making corn liquor was one way some people survived.

The cash from the sale of such liquor was deemed vital for existence. This included honest but

poor people trying to make a living, and Hammond said that a lot of “fine people” did it just to

support their families. Bootlegging connected a lot of people in the county, since some were

involved in making it, others would sell it, and still others sold the jars and the sugar to produce

it. When the authorities did come arrest the whiskey makers, taking them up to jail in Columbia,

it was reported that the wives and children of the men who were arrested would sometimes show

up on the doorstep of the local senator or sheriff, crying for lack of food and money without their

main source of income (Nelson). For relativists, corn liquor production was an insidious but

viable industry that helped Berkeley County through some very tough and desperate economic

times. Betty Parker* summed it up with this statement: “If it had not been for moonshine being

produced here, people would have starved to death.”

The remote, expansive nature of the swamp and woods in Berkeley County often

prevented law enforcement from detecting the liquor stills. However, Green remembered getting

up in the morning as a child, “And you’d look out and you’d see a little trail o’ smoke here, an’ a

little trail o’ smoke yonder, and you knew that was the whiskey still, but people didn’t bother one

another” about it. As a boy, Kenneth Findlay was amused at the comic antics of a moonshiner

who habitually lost his footing:

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I’ve seen people come out of the woods with two-quart jars of liquor under both arms. And I remember one old fellow, especially I seen him time and time again, had a little ditch by the road where, when he would catch that ditch, [he would] always drop one of those jars of whiskey. And I always liked to watch him because I knew what was going to happen every time. (Laughed).

After Prohibition was over, the local press declared that the moonshine industry in Berkeley

County was “just as active” but less profitable, since moonshine did not transport as much whiskey to Charleston, where people could now legally buy liquor in stores. The article quotes a local officer as stating that two hundred gallons were being produced daily, in 1939, at the community of Cainhoy alone (The News and Courier 1939b:2). Two years later, whiskey stills were continually being smashed up by revenue agents, such as the 100-gallon still in the woods near Cooper Store Crossroads in 1941 (Charleston Evening Post 1941a:A-9).

The making and selling of moonshine brought violence to the community: vengeful,

violent clashes and “shoot ’em ups” happened in the middle of town. Two major “factions” in

town competed for their share of the profits and each threatened to turn the other over to law

enforcement. Some thought the groups fought over stealing one another’s liquor. One day the

young boy George Adams was delivering the paper and returned by way of the Atlantic Coast

Line railroad tracks. As the train came by, several automobiles pulled up, and people jumped out

of the cars and started shooting at each other:

I saw that fella run around the back of that Coca-Cola building, and I saw this fella jump out the automobile, and he went to shootin’ him, when he was goin’ round that building. Well, I looked back there and there was one man layin’ down on the road like that with his arms spread out, and he was dead. I can see that man runnin’ and that man shootin’ him, just like in the Wild West shows, you know? And I tell you, I was about ready to crawl underneath them rail cars and hold that rail freight train ten miles along and it was a steam engine, you know, and I was scared to death. I never carried

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the paper again. I wouldn’t go back up there no kinda how, and that was that ruined me (Adams).

Others were killed in that same shootout on May 4, 1926 (“Murder and Mayhem in Moncks

Corner” 1926:1); the young George Adams gave up his paper delivery route after that.

The bootlegging of “Berkeley Corn” whiskey also took on national significance, at least

in the local legends of that preeminent bootlegger and gangster, Al Capone. Corn whiskey was

put into the railway cars on a side track near the local community of MacBeth and shipped up

North to Chicago and New York. Al Capone was very well known in the county because he was

“King Bee, and he was the one that got most of the whiskey” shipped out of Berkeley County

(Green). He was recognized and entertained in town, and I was able to meet a person who had

met him. She said he was a nice looking man with good manners, and that he would have

dinner, the large mid-day meal, at her family’s house. She said, “He was accepted here. We

thought nothing of it. He was just another fellow coming in to eat lunch” (Ingram*). A local

business contact of Capone’s reportedly built a house across the street from the Berkeley County courthouse in order to make friends with the judges and entertain them (that same house was rumored to have later been lost in a high-stakes poker match). Reputed to be a local leader of the bootleggers, this Moncks Corner man bought whiskey from the local producers, loaded it up on the Atlantic Coast train line and covered it with junk furniture to send to Al Capone. The junk furniture trade was ostensibly Capone’s front for a business in Chicago. All of these stories may have been stretched as undocumented versions of tall tales, but they were widely regarded by the participants as fact.

Moncks Corner’s local political scene, widely considered to be “dirty” and “terrible,”

also contributed to its 1930s image as a rough town. At that time, two factions were competing

for power; both were, of course, Democrat, since “everybody was a Democrat back then”

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(Findlay). One woman describes the stump meetings that took place, at which each politician

would give speeches and make promises to the voters. Each group conducted its stump

meetings, guarded by their gun-carrying constables, on the porch: “On one side the steps would

be [one faction] with their guns . . . and on the other side of the steps would be [the other faction]

and ooooh, there was so much tension. You didn’t dare say nothing wrong because they’d pull

up there in front and start shootin’!” (Nelson). There were also hints of such corrupt practices as

ballot stuffing. While one woman delicately phrased Berkeley County politics as “severe” with

several “tragedies connected to it” (Hill), another joked that it was “so rough, tough, mean” in

Moncks Corner that, “instead of kissing you good night, they would ‘shoot’ you good night!”

(Lee).

Joking aside, one particular political tragedy was prominent in the minds of the

interviewees. Senator Ed Dennis was shot in the center of Moncks Corner, in the middle of the day, while returning from the post office to his office on Main Street on July 24, 1930. He was shot walking down the street by one of his political rivals and cousins, Sporty Thornley, the

county supervisor. Barbara Wilson remembered that day because her parents’ friends wouldn’t let her walk through town to get the mail at the post office just after it happened. Other interviewees claimed to be either witnesses or in town when the shooting occurred. People were horrified at the violent, tragic death of their beloved senator. Said Frances Bailey, “It was a sad time.”

Community politics formed a large part of the political scene at the time. The local

senator was particularly important, since nothing was passed by the state legislature for the area unless the county senator approved it. The sheriff was also powerful because he had control over deputies “as fingers that reached out in the county” (Evans). Said Evans, “As long as the senator

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and the sheriff were on board together, things worked well.” If they weren’t in agreement,

though, there was trouble in the county. To some degree, lawlessness or “taking the law into

your own hands” was tolerated in the county. When the Depression first hit the area, several

depositors broke into the closed local bank to take out their own money in the early 1930s.

Though they were tried in court, they were acquitted since to the jurors it seemed only fair that

the men were attempting to retrieve some of what they lost in the financial crash (Works

Progress Administration 1941[1988]:296).

African Americans were disenfranchised in the local and general elections. Several of

them quietly reported to me that they were not allowed to vote at that time, an injustice that continued through the next couple of decades until the gains of the civil rights era. Also, strong racist attitudes expressed by white politicians such as Senator “Cotton” Ed Smith were the order of the day. The omnipotent Democratic Party of 1930s South Carolina circumvented the law in this case by claiming that local elections (generally held as primaries, organized entirely by the

Democratic party) were a private affair, and that they could exclude the African American votes

if they wanted to. One African American man explained the history of political and economic

subjugation in Berkeley County:

There wasn’t any politics [for blacks in the 1930s]. And black folks were always in a slave mode. And you were always brought up in that mode that you were a slave, and you looked up to white people. As a superior. A superior being, and you were told what to do. That’s why you were on the plantation. Because you were owned, originally, by the plantation owners. So when you were free, and had a little bit of freedom, but you still didn’t have anything, so you depended on the plantation owner still. And that was the politics. To a large extent, it’s still like that. That comes to economics. And that’s a fact (Simpson*).

African Americans were disenfranchised during the first half of the twentieth century, but as late

as the 1930s much of the rural black population was not yet organizing to seek political equality

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(Hayes 2001:158-159). Most of the African Americans interviewed, however, claimed to have supported President Roosevelt’s programs of Social Security and job creation in the area. One man reported that Roosevelt “was a lifesaver” because he came to help at a time “when we were barely surviving. Roosevelt saved this country” (Vaughn). Generally, African Americans in the basin area believed they benefited from Roosevelt’s New Deal program.

Berkeley County Health Issues

Health concerns in the county were a problem in the 1930s, especially given the relative lack of available care. A local newspaper article cited the death rate of Berkeley County African

Americans to be twice that of white residents (“History of Local Hospital Cited in Southern

Hospital” c1936). For many years, only a few physicians attended to patients in the County. Dr.

William Fishburne was one whom people remembered as serving in the county, as were Dr.

Evans, an African American doctor people remembered had a prominent presence in Moncks

Corner, and Dr. Mason. The rates of communicable diseases like smallpox, diphtheria, and typhoid fever, were high, as were maternal and infant mortality rates. No health care facility could be found in the area; patients requiring hospitalization had to go to Roper Hospital in

Charleston (Baskin 1958). Tuberculosis was a major health concern, with an estimated hundred or so cases county-wide in the early 1930s. Established originally as a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients, the Berkeley County Hospital was founded by Doctor William K.

Fishburne in Moncks Corner in 1931 (Orvin 1950) with financial backing from the state and from private sources. The Berkeley County health department also dispersed into the community to launch a hookworm intervention program and promote other sanitary practices among school children (Baskin 1958).

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Malaria statistics compiled from the early 1930s show that Berkeley County was similar

to other Lowcountry counties in battling a resurgence in the incidence of both malarial morbidity and mortality. While in 1927 there were 423 reported cases of malaria in Berkeley County (rate of 18.9 per 1,000 people), by 1930 there were 1470 cases (rate of 66.1 per 1,000 people). In

1931 there was a drop again to 372 cases and 338 cases in 1932 (Hoffman 1933:25-27). Deaths from malaria in Berkeley County were twenty-four in 1929 but declined to seventeen and then

nine in 1931 and 1932, respectively (Hoffman 128-29). The statewide trend over the same

period saw a decline in malaria from 20,601 reported cases in 1928 to 11,903 in 1932 (from a

rate of 11.9 cases per 1,000 people to 6.8 cases per 1,000 people) (Hoffman 1933:11). The

fourteen counties that make up the Lowcountry were the locus for about three-fourths of all

malarial deaths in the state of South Carolina from the period 1929 to 1935 (Dauer and Faust

1937:23).

In 1938, Dr. Fishburne, as the county health officer and president of the hospital,

describes in his annual report that health conditions in Berkeley County are improving slightly.

Although the “dread disease” of polio was on the wane with seven cases for the year,

tuberculosis, in addition to syphilis and malaria, continued to be the major problem in the county

(Fishburne 1939:4). Forty-one cases of whooping cough were reported in the first three months

of 1939 (Berkeley Democrat 1939:3). Malaria was the illness most recalled by the people

interviewed.

The Santee basin landscape, its climate, and its human communities interacted in ways

that influenced human health. In her book The Health of the Country, Conevery Bolton

Valencius describes ways in which frontier settlers in the early nineteenth century perceived the

landscape based on its likely health or disease traits. She emphasizes how important people’s

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perceptions of health are to their evaluation of the environment. For example, the settlers of

Arkansas and Missouri in the nineteenth century used the term miasma for the harmful and damp

air they thought caused diseases. Valencius provides a description of these miasmas:

They carried the essence of decay and putrefaction. Like fog or mist, they moved in and through the air. They could emanate from stagnant water, from earth, and from rotting objects. Transferring balance and ill health from the surrounding world to the interior of one’s body, they were the causal mechanism whereby elements of the environment affected the individual’s health (2002:114).

My research benefits from this description of miasmas because the term characterizes the strong

link between damp environments and disease. In this oral history I probed the perception and

incidence of the disease that we now know to be malaria, a common sickness in low-lying

wetland environments. The Lowcountry landscape in South Carolina was infamous for its high

rates of malaria. The nearby swamps were viewed as inimical to human health due to their

reputation as a damp and malarial environment. By the time of Santee Cooper, however, most

people, especially medical professionals, were equipped with the knowledge that it was

mosquitoes, not “bad air,” that transmitted malaria. In this case, increasing epidemiological

knowledge of malaria helped to save lives but did not change the fact that some wetland

environments were more prone to malaria than others.

Malaria was endemic among impoverished farmers in the Southeast, both white and

black (Humphreys 1996). The spread of the disease across the Southeastern region had worsened in the years 1934 and 1935, and it remained particularly rampant in the Santee basin

(Humphreys 1996). The interviewees remembered mosquitoes in the 1930s as being much worse then, and bigger (although a few claimed that they weren’t as bad as mosquitoes today).

Mosquitoes of that era were “terrible” and “huge.” They mentioned that there were a number of deaths due to malaria, especially among African American children in the area. They knew that

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the disease was spread by mosquitoes that bit another person with malaria, and that most people

became sick in the late summer and early fall. Joseph Hammond said having malaria was “rough

– you ’bout to freeze to death, shivering and all.” David Randolph recalled that a bout would last for around six weeks, with chills and high fever, adding that it was “just a misery.” Clifford

Martin was sent to the hospital for several blood transfusions, during which the blood-donating patient would be right beside him, on a gurney, donating blood that was put into the recipient. A few interviewees claimed to have had malaria each year as a child and then built up immunity to it over the years.

People tried to prevent mosquitoes and malaria in several ways in the 1930s. Emma Lee

remembered, “Oh, we had a time fightin’ ’em!” But battle them they did. One way to keep the

mosquitoes away was to build screens on the windows and doors of houses. The people who

could afford it went to the village of Pinopolis, which was located on higher ground than most of

the area nearby. Some of those living in the town never had malaria; others recall their

proximity to the “swamp” as a factor in contracting the disease.

Another method they used for keeping the mosquitoes at bay was to set small fires,

creating smoke to get rid of the insects. Often, they would put water or wet rags on the house so

the homes wouldn’t catch fire. Glenn Edwards remembered building a smoke screen to keep the

mosquitoes away as they brought in the cows each night, since mosquitoes were more active in

the evening. They created these smoke screens by setting fire to rags and leaves in a bucket.

Because not everybody at that time associated mosquitoes with malaria, Dr. Fishburne

explained the link between the insect and the disease. He exhorted the people of Berkeley

County to properly dispose of all refuse, especially used tin food cans, in order to prevent

mosquitoes from spreading malaria. He stated that “criminal ignorance” was exhibited in the

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way people left out empty cans to fill up with water and attract mosquitoes. He encouraged

people to bury their cans in the ground, a practice that would save families “much illness,

energy, vitality and money, and maybe a tombstone” (c1937).

People widely consumed different medicines and herbal remedies to combat the onset of

malaria. Quinine was the major drug people remembered taking to prevent illness. Frances

Bailey recalled, “I’ve taken many a dose of quinine, oh yes!” Caroline Ingram said the bitter

medicine was “supposed to taste like chocolate” but didn’t, and that her father came home from

work every four hours and “poked it right on down” the mouths of her siblings and herself. A

few recalled that as a side effect of quinine, one turned “yellow as gold”; the drug even

contributed to deafness in a few young persons. People took other home remedies to prevent

malaria, such as castor oil. David Randolph said his doctor prescribed a springtime tonic made

of a mixture of iron, quinine, and strychnine that was supposed to “clean you out.” And still

others remembered that not everybody had the chance to take the preventative medicine. Most

people were thankful that malaria was eventually wiped out over the next decade. They

lamented that the mosquitoes, however, were here to stay, almost as much as a nuisance now as

they were decades ago.

A Fondness for the Past

Despite the hard work, poverty, illness, and political turmoil of the 1930s in Berkeley

County, some people look back on the era with fondness and nostalgia. They referred to the rural area as “quiet,” “slow,” and simple before Santee Cooper came. They believed the hard, intense work built good moral character in themselves and in their families. Work was challenging, but the rewards were intrinsic to their ideas of self-worth. Some families had to

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work hard just to produce their own food. Said Emma Lee, “I knew it when I started growing up

that I had to work in order to survive. And so I didn’t have no trouble. I’ve always worked hard

all my life.” Daniel Evans reflected upon his youth of hard work on a dairy farm:

At the dairy it was 7 days a week, 365 days a year. And we worked hard, we didn’t have a lot of money and times were tough, and all like that, but it was a good life, really. I wouldn’t take anything in the world for it. I think it taught you self-discipline, I think it taught you responsibility, and I think those are the things you need if you are going to be successful and happy in life. I think you are going to have to get them sooner or later. And I just cherish it, I really do.

Some of the participants noted that life was simpler in the old days. Saying how she enjoyed the

unpasteurized fresh milk from the cow her mother had, Betty Parker said, “all the government

regulations didn’t apply back then. It was different, uncomplicated.”

Families and communities then were characterized as friendly and neighborly, pooling

together their resources during a crisis. The interviewees also referenced a great deal of reciprocal sharing and helping one another through difficult times. Joseph Hammond remembered when his family’s barn burned down, killing the horse and mules inside. He said that neighbors sent mules and horses for his father to use, and gave him feed for the borrowed animals. “That’s how close people were. They helped each other. But it’s quite different now, yes sir” (Hammond). Henry Davis recalled his father and another man helping neighbors during malaria season each year. He said they went “from house to house, everyday, to help them get some wood . . . and see that everyone had a little of what they really needed.” Another man’s father would loan a milk cow to a destitute neighbor with children to feed. People believed their neighbors would look out for their families just as they had done for their neighbors.

Another form of reciprocal sharing was the “meat club” that enabled neighbors to

cooperate and prevent the spoilage of meat. With such a club, the neighbors would get together

189 and take turns butchering their cows or pigs and then share so they didn’t have to worry about preserving all the meat. For Evans, such sharing “made life a lot easier, a lot more convenient.”

Another interviewee noted that if a neighbor went down to Charleston (a trip of about thirty miles), you could ask him to purchase and bring something back for you such as clothing

(Adams). In general, the interviewees recalled that back in those days people would come to your aid if you needed it.

Friends and neighbors looked after and protected children locally. My interviewees were young in the 1930s and remember feeling sheltered while growing up in a small, close-knit community. Mary Nelson said that they “just more or less ran around with the crowd that was in the community, like your cousins.” In those days, said Isabelle Carter, “if anybody saw a child not doin’ the right thing, they would correct ’em, you know, ’cause they knew their mother and father, that was what they would want.” Another woman noted that it was such a small town that you knew if a child was visiting from another community. Many times, such out-of-town visits were written up in the society pages of the Berkeley Democrat as news of general interest.

In an emotional remembrance of those days, Dale Green said, “It was hard life, but it was a good, honest life. People respected one another, they respected Jesus Christ more, and I think we just had a better feeling for and love for one another.” Another woman assesses her life somewhat wistfully:

I’ve been through a lot, but I’ve been blessed through it all, you know. I don’t want to go back, you know, and live through all of that again, but I feel good about it. I always tried to do what I felt like my mother taught me to do the right thing, and had a bit of happy memories” (Carter).

The emotional salience of memories with family and community ranged from sad to happy.

George Adams told me that life was wonderful back then. “You missed out on livin’. I mean, if

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you lived back then, you wouldn’t have traded for what it is now. No way.” Many of these

participants felt that the close sense of community they formerly shared was something that had

fallen “by the wayside” with the passage of decades and the influx of people and new

technology.

The Landscape before Santee Cooper

The basin landscape occupied a prominent place in many of the interviewees’ minds and

memories of their youths. The material landscape evokes and shapes memories in a particular

way. The participants’ cognition of the landscape can be explained with three major categories:

scale, features, and meaning. The Santee basin landscape is also salient because of its unique

features, both ecological and historical. These features include not only the swamps and forests

but also landmarks like roads, houses, and churches.

I also sought memories of the basin landscape as a way reconstructing what people thought it was like then. What were their impressions of the land and what was in the landscape?

I asked the participants to describe what the land was like in the basin before Santee Cooper came along. It was called the basin because it was similar to a very shallow bowl. The basin

would have been a bit different from the rest of the county because it was along the path of the

Santee River, and it was an ecologically productive watershed. For the people who had grown

up in town, they were most likely to say, “There was nothing out there.” But it was not just a

land observed; it was a land inhabited and “shaped, over time, by the social customs, economic

practices, and personal habits of the inhabitants” (Stewart 1996:50). I employ Stewart’s term

“vernacular landscape” as a way to elucidate how these participants viewed the basin landscape,

since meaning of the landscape emerges from the experiences of people who live in the place.

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This view supports my assertion that humans assign cultural meaning to the landscape based on

their familiarity with it.

There were many others whose families lived in or very near the basin, and they were

most likely to talk about the farms and special places they remember amidst the woods. Joseph

Hammond expressed his fondness for the way the basin used to be when he said, “I loved the

whole country.” When I asked interviewees how they remember the landscape before the

project, they most commonly replied that it was composed mostly of swamp, woods, and farms.

This reply supports Stewart’s notion of landscape as a patchwork of shaped (by humans) and

unshaped spaces (1996:50). In the case of the Santee basin landscape, the shaped spaces would

be those of farms, while the unshaped spaces were those of swamp and forests.

Most people remember the basin as being a “swamp,” a description of the landscape that

connotes wildness and naturalness. A few interviewees elaborated slightly on this simple

description. Kenneth Findlay termed it a “regular jungle” and described it as being full of trees

and wildlife like turkeys and deer. It was a “very thickly-wooded area” said Carter. Bill

Anderson remembered that the swamp felt so thick that “you couldn’t walk there ten feet and [. .

.] find yourself.” It was reported in the local paper that a man from St. Stephen wandered

around, lost, in the swamp for most of a day after becoming separated from the rest of his party.

He eventually came upon the logging road that led to the Camp Manufacturing Company (The

News and Courier 1938b:4).

One thing that surprised me was how undifferentiated the answers were regarding the basin land before Santee Cooper. Instead of going into detail about the observable and ecological characteristics of it, people generally amassed a whole section in one or few simple terms: swamp, woods, and farms. The use of these descriptors conveys the sense of scale that

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the interviewees had of the basin. They considered the land in terms of its overall characteristics

and usefulness or degree of human activity, though it is clear from their descriptions that the

interviewees did not view the land as undifferentiated and incomplete. Their descriptive terms,

though simple, were rich with meaning and ideas about development versus the status quo.

The word “swamp” itself is indexical to larger themes of how people lived on the land at

that time. The term connotes an area as mostly unused and uncultivated, as opposed to its

ecological definition of productive wetlands. To some degree, the interviewees acknowledged

that they knew families were eking out an existence in the swampy land of the basin, where they

engaged in small-scale agriculture or allowed their livestock to roam freely. Stewart refers to the inhabitation and use of such swamps by many generations of African Americans in the coastal

Southeast when he explains how the swamp offered them a refuge and a place to hunt and grow rice; for these inhabitants, the swamp was a landscape of subsistence and autonomy (1996:245).

The swamp was also a place in which to “hide out” or become lost. One description that

hints of the remoteness of the Santee “wilderness” was provided by an officer who arrested

“Rattlesnake Joe,” a well-known Berkeley swamp denizen who collected, sold, and shipped

snakes. Deputy Martin recalled that it “was cool as a winter’s night” in the dense June swamp

and that his car became bogged down in water several times (Charleston Evening Post 1941b:A-

10). At least one interviewee recalled Rattlesnake Joe’s living in the swamp. There were also interesting place-names for the swamps in the area, such as Hell-Hole Swamp, Hog Swamp, and

Wadboo Swamp. Hell-Hole was so named because it was reputed to be a hideout for criminal fugitives on the run (WPA 1941: 146).

People also regarded the wooded areas of the basin as a dense forest because of its scale

and features. A few said that the basin was “nothing but trees!” Thus the scale of the forest, in

193 their minds, was immense and all-encompassing. Joseph Hammond said the area was a forest of long leaf pine, and “Boy, it smelled good!” Dale Green remembered that “it was just beautiful timber” consisting of oak trees and pine trees. He recalled the virgin pine trees on his family’s property that were left to grow. Then, if timber was needed, they would go out and find the best tree, cut it down, carry it to the sawmill, and use the planks for the building of the house or barn.

Others remarked that the forests were full of “pristine” or “virgin” timber, noting the “gorgeous” cypress trees and the “nice big palms.” Several of the participants remembered roaming freely through the basin woods as children with friends. Wendell Foster’s father would saddle his horses, Cyclone and Dixie, so his son and friends could go out riding in the woods.

Roads also connected small communities all over the basin, many of them cutting straight through. A major road connected MacBeth with Pinopolis, through the Black Oak section where the famous Black Oak church sat (Figure 5.6). A road also ran from Cross to the Bonneau/St.

Stephens area through the old Broughton Hall section, which would today take a path through the center of Lake Moultrie. Clifford Martin said this road, called the Bonneau Ferry road, would take a person from Bonneau all the way to Columbia and would pass a dozen or so large plantations along the way. Another woman describes the beauty of the road in an anonymous interview in 1977 with Greg Day:

The road that we lived on was beautiful. It was the road that led from Moncks Corner through Pinopolis and Oh! It came down to this swamp, which I just loved, Ferguson Bridges Swamp is what they called it. It was absolutely gorgeous with old oak trees. It was a scenic highway (quoted in Day 1977:127).

In addition, the old colonial Milton Ferry Road ran from the Bonneau area to Russellville. Yet another road connected Moncks Corner with Eutawville. Young people enjoyed traveling these country roads and over bridges, especially on Sunday afternoons. After the flooding of the basin,

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the towns were further separated because the roads formerly connecting them across the basin were under water. The communities seemed further apart, and traveling from one town to

another became difficult. Currently, Highway 6 runs from Moncks Corner to Cross to

Eutawville, and one must travel a long way around to reach each town.

Many interviewees noted that the land in the basin before Santee Cooper contained

productive farmland. Some drier areas of high ground were suitable for farming. Contrary to the

promoters’ characterization that the whole area was swampland, several people noted that there

were “fields everywhere.” Their observations also contradict the view that the basin was all

forest, which affects the notion of scale in the basin landscape since people viewed large

expanses of land as having a single use. Several interviewees claimed it as their farmland and

said that they and their families were farming in the basin before Santee Cooper came along.

Some sections contained cultivated fields, but many were without planted crops. Dale Green recalled seeing old rice fields with banks that would hold up the water needed to irrigate the rice

crops.

Other recalled features of the basin were the swimming holes, some of which were fed by

natural springs. Henry Davis explained that small eight to ten-foot wide creeks fed into the

swamp and met up with the main stream. The area of Broughton Hall contained an old canal and

creeks with dark, blackish water; these waterways formed a swimming pond for the nearby

children. They had a swimming hole named after the tortoise, but back then, “they called ’em

cooters” (Hill). George Adams remembered his fondness for this particular swimming hole:

We would walk out [in the basin], and go swimmin’ at Cooter Hole. They called it Cooter Hole. And you’d go by somebody, ‘Hey, you want to go swimmin’ at Cooter Hole?’ ‘Yeah, let’s go!’ And we’d take up and we’d run the halfway there, and walk and run, you know, get out there and we’d be hot and sweaty and we’d dive off that bridge down in that deep hole! And we had a good

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time [. . .] I remember how much we enjoyed Cooter Hole swimmin’.

When he returned from his army service years later, it was gone, under the waters of the lake.

Another water source was the fascinating Eutaw Springs, site of the American Revolutionary

battle with the British, but also home to several natural springs that sprayed water out of the

ground (Norris).

Several participants recollected fishing with their friends and parents in the spring-fed creeks. David Randolph said that he remembered fishing with his father in the swamp as a child.

They would travel along the road that went from Pinopolis to MacBeth into the Somerton swamp where there were three fresh water streams that converged and three small bridges where they would fish. Isabelle Carter remembered going with her family to fish for freshwater trout at the site of the old Santee Canal.

A great amount and variety of wildlife lived in the basin, and hunting was a common

pastime and source of food for people then. Bird hunting for wild ducks, quail, and doves was the sport of choice. George Adams declared that the area “was my huntin’ country” and relished the memory of the abundance of wild birds. There were between four and five covey of quail near his house, he said, with twenty-five to thirty birds in each covey. Some of the men said they were tempted to hunt on the old plantation lands that were off-limits. Henry Davis said, “What I remember about us young boys” is that he and his friends would see the wild ducks on the natural ponds and, “we’d give our right arm to take a shot at those ducks.” But they knew they weren’t allowed to disturb them, since they would be caught for trespassing. Dale Green recalled paddling in a cypress boat among the small creeks to get to the main part of the old

Cooper River to shoot at ducks that were on private land:

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The river was, it was just beautiful, and the ducks great, Lord o’ mercy! We’d go down there as a kid, I remember. I’d get a slingshot with a firecracker thing in it, one of them torpedoes or whatever they’re called, and I’d shoot it over into that rice field, ’cause the Yankees had all the ducks. And those ducks would just git up out there, just thousands of ’em, and you’d shoot ’em with the gun out in the rice field. But we did have a lot of good times ’til we got caught!

More than once, he was found out and got in trouble with the local caretaker of the property.

Other hunted game included deer and foxes. Patricia Hill remembered the organized weekly

foxhunts among the plantation families in the basin woods from Pinopolis almost to Moncks

Corner. As a girl, she would sit on her back steps and hear the men calling the hundred or so

dogs in the chase for the fox.

Even though the people acknowledged the vast expanses of swamp and farmland, they

recalled the man-made features found in the landscape as well. Many houses were out in the basin, some inhabited, some abandoned. Some were large plantation houses and some smaller farmhouses. A number of the smaller houses were called shanties, in which mostly African

American families lived. The houses were often clustered in small settlements scattered through the basin. While there were no actual towns, there were communities, which David Randolph defined as little groups of houses with people living in them. He remembered that his mother would go out in the country and buy chickens and produce from the people who had small farms in the basin.

There were several landmark churches that people recalled as occupying the basin. The

Rocks Church in the Upper Basin, at Eutawville, and the Black Oak Church (Figure 5.6) near the

old Santee canal in the lower basin were established as “chapels of ease.” A chapel of ease is

like a branch, such as the affiliate church of the main Episcopal Church located in Charleston.

Since it was local, families could more easily travel to the branch church when they weren’t able

197 to make the trip to Charleston. For example, Black Oak Church was a branch of the Trinity

Protestant Episcopal Church of Charleston, as was the Trinity Pinopolis branch. The Black Oak church was constructed in 1846 out of wood. While the church served as a uniting place of leadership and influence for Episcopalians in Berkeley County, over time the population decline and poverty in the area decimated the size of the congregation to the point that church services were being held only once a year; this was the case in the 1930s (Berkeley County Historical

Society 1986: 21).

The Audubon Society printed its estimate of twenty-eight churches slated for destruction by the waters of the Santee (Audubon Society 1939:174). In his survey of Berkeley County for the WPA, Henry Ravenel Dwight listed several churches in Berkeley County in the 1930s. I cross-referenced them with the cemetery records (Berkeley County Historical Society 1986) to find the ones that were actually in the basin and would eventually be inundated by Santee

Cooper. The chapels of ease attended by the white parishioners included Black Oak and The

Rocks. The African American churches in the basin included Mt. Carmel African Methodist

Episcopal near Bonneau, Reconciliation Reformed Episcopal at Hog Swamp, and Good

Shepherd Reformed Episcopal at Frierson. Countless other unnamed churches as well as hundreds of cemeteries on both church and family lands contained the graves of thousands of former Berkeley County residents.

The interviewees also recalled the plantations as significant landmarks. These ancestral homes (comprising the land, the houses and out buildings) were owned by patrician families who had lived there for generations after a few centuries of planting rice and cotton. These descendents of the original Huguenot settlers and planters were considered “blue-bloods” by the general Berkeley County population. It was said they were “rich in land” although they were

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mostly cash-poor in the 1930s, like everyone else in the region (Spruill 2004). After the

economic ruin of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the fall of cotton in South Carolina, many

of these homes became almost completely dilapidated. Northerners purchased some of the

plantations were turned them into recreational hunting grounds for the wealthy.

In this region of the state, plantation lands and established families went hand-in-hand.

In describing the plantations, Flora Surles references the “blood-soil ties that so strongly

characterize” the early pioneer families of South Carolina (1938:III-2). This area was called

“Ante-diluvian St. John’s” by the landholders who wanted to preserve the history of the region

against the threat of Santee Cooper (Ashmore 1939:9). Many of the interviewees remembered

the Santee basin plantations, whose unique place-names figured prominently in their

recollections of their youthful pasts and experiences in the basin landscape.

J. P. Gaillard, a Charleston civil engineer, put together “Map of Berkeley” 1900 to 1962

(Figure 5.5) to show where the waters would flood the plantations and the tracts of land in the basin. The map shown in Figure 5.5 is a portion of the map that covers the lower lake, the

Pinopolis reservoir, showing an area of approximately 75,000 acres with the former streams and tributaries of the Santee River running through this section of Berkeley County. The outline of the future site of Lake Moultrie is drawn on the map. The village of Pinopolis can be seen as a small peninsula in the very bottom center of the map. The map is divided into various portions, some large and some small, and it clearly demonstrates that the tracts of land belong to and are owned by people; they are not orphaned or government-owned acres. There are tracts that cross the boundaries of the proposed lake. In most of these cases, the Authority generally purchased the entire parcel. Some of the larger tracts that can be easily identified and that correspond with some of the plantation homes are, across the top from left to right, Harbin, Woodlawn,

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Northhampton (with Black Oak church), and Pooshee. In the middle, from left to right, are

Ophir, Whitehall, Hanover, Somerton, Wantoot, and Woodboo. Just below that lie Somerset,

Wampee, and Broughton. Many smaller tracts drawn on the map display the family names of the owner.

When politicians began encouraging the Santee Cooper project, Francis Marion Kirk penned his feature articles on the Santee basin plantations, published in the Charleston newspapers. He also wrote the following poem, “Sonnet of Regret,” in 1935 to express his bereavement upon the loss of the Santee basin plantations at the hands of developers:

It matters not, I Know, this is my Beloved land. It matters not, I Know That I hold sacred every spot where lie Remains of those who died so long ago; Who lie in peace close to the homes they loved. It matters not that 'neath these age-old trees High-minded men so eagerly once roved In search of homes. Far over distant seas They came. And here, they lived, And Heaven smiled. For note how from Virgin Wilderness They made a Garden; how they tamed the Wild. And found in their new land happiness. It matters not that all of this must go. All my regrets - they matter not, I Know.

Later, Samuel Gaillard Stoney wrote another series of articles for The News and Courier about the plantations to be flooded by the Santee-Cooper lakes. These appeared in the paper in the years 1938 to 1939 and would later be featured in the book Plantations of the Carolina

Lowcountry. Donald Lewis, a descendant of a plantation family, said many families, including his own, were planning to renovate and restore the homes to their former magnificent beauty, since at the time of the late 1930s many of the homes needed repair and were lacking paint.

Many of the interviewees who were not descendants of the plantation families recall their visits to the many plantations. George Adams remembered that traveling the road from

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Pinopolis to MacBeth would take him by many plantations, including Norfolk, Somerset,

Kingston, and Wampee. He also recalled the foxhunts among the plantation families and

remarked that they were grand affairs, with hundreds of dogs brought in for the chase. Barbara

Wilson remembered going with her father through the basin as he recorded household

information for the 1930 United States Census. One of the plantations had a white bear rug on

the floor, which both scared and impressed her as a very young girl. Other homes to be

inundated included White Hall (built 1822), belonging to the Lucas family, and Ophir (built

1810), which belonged to the Porcher family. The Springfield home was built of cypress in 1818

by Joseph Palmer and featured elaborate, delicate carvings in the woodwork.

Several of the plantations were up the river, closer to the upper lake (Lake Marion) that

would inundate the area than to the Pinopolis lake. The Rocks plantation was once the home of the wealthy cotton pioneer, Peter Gaillard, who bought the house in 1794. On its lands were exposed outcroppings of marl, hence the name “The Rocks.” The home was built in Georgian colonial style. Although the house once stood in Berkeley County, the line was changed so that the lands sat in Orangeburg County. At the time of the 1930s it was owned by the Connor family, who excelled at raising livestock on their lands (Want 1939:10).

Gippy plantation, located on the western side of the Cooper River near Moncks Corner,

was named after the local swamp. In the 1930s it was owned by Nicholas G. Roosevelt and his

wife, the former Emily Sinkler, and was a productive dairy farm with many Guernsey cattle.

The dairy facilities were destroyed by a large fire on October 22, 1941 (The News and Courier

1941g:1). Several interviewees recalled its renowned dairy farm.

Other plantations were famous for the American revolutionary generals who lived there.

Pond Bluff was once home to General Francis “Swamp Fox” Marion. Northampton was the

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home of General William Moultrie, who cultivated rice and cotton there. At the time of Santee

Cooper development, a family from New York owned it.

Two of the homes stood out in the minds of several interviewees because they had had

experiences there. Somerset (Figure 5.7), the house on the 5,500-acre estate of the Cain family,

was built by William Cain, a lieutenant governor of the state, and was the site of a prosperous

jonquil farm tended by Miss Caroline Cain and her sister, Katharine. Julia Kennedy recalled

going to the Somerset house, the home of her Sunday school teacher, as a child around Christmas

to collect spiky gumballs from the gumball tree and decorating them as Christmas ornaments.

Those unmarried sisters of Somerset were extremely industrious, she said, growing daffodils and harvesting the flowers each year to send to New York.

Belvidere plantation was the other home that people remember well. It was the grand

estate of the Sinkler family and host of the St. John’s Jockey Club in the Eutaw Springs section.

Before the flooding of the lakes, the Sinkler family held their last annual spring plantation horse

race at Belvidere. They hosted tournaments with lances. Martha Bridges recalled when actress

Katharine Hepburn came to the area to attend the horse races one year. She was most impressed

with the red haired movie star’s mode of transport, a convertible car. “She was pretty. I was

staring, and I must have been awful young, ’cause I was carried away with it” (Martha

Bridges*). In her memoir Belvidere, Anne Sinkler Fishburne wrote about the “happy hunting

grounds” where her husband Dr. Fishburne courted her (1969:124). Eutaw plantation (Figure

5.8) was another home of the Sinkler family, built by William Sinkler in 1808 and known for its

excellence in horsemanship. The house featured bricks taken from a British outpost in the

revolutionary battle of nearby Eutaw Springs (Stoney 1938: 77).

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Other houses were noted for their historical value. The Hanover house (Figure 5.9) was built in 1716 by the St. Julien family. One of the sole relics of the Colonial area in the basin, the house was a cypress wooden structure with chimneys of handmade brick imported from England

(The News and Courier 1941d:12). The chimney featured an inscription, “peu à peu” which was the beginning of a French proverb, “Little by little the bird builds its nest.” Henry Davis recalled playing around the Hanover house, and he used to fish in the streams behind it.

Wantoot plantation was the site of many legends involving pirates, including one story told of pirate Stede Bonnet’s trek to the mouth of the Santee to find a place to hide his booty; he dropped it into the pond on the Wantoot Plantation grounds. The News and Courier warned all would-be treasure hunters that this legendary stash of gold would soon be lost under the waters of the lakes (1940f:10).

The interviewees still carried mental maps in their heads of special places in the Santee basin before it was inundated. These cognitive maps related aspects of the scale and features of the landscape they recalled. The scale of the landscape was conveyed as people described sections based on their expansiveness with words such as “forests,” “swamps” and “farms.”

Interviewees also recalled the landscape’s natural and manmade features, such as roads, streams, springs, and homes. These features led them to reconstruct the landscape in terms of cultural meaning and attachment. The locations and features of the landscape they remembered serve as indices to their mental store of lived experiences and family traditions. The place-names of the plantations endowed the basin area with rich histories and memories of the more prosperous planting days that had passed since the Civil War. It is significant that the place-names of these plantations as well as the memories of the homes figured prominently in the recollections of the interviewees. They remember the area not only as one of swamp and forest but also of farms,

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homes, families, and legends. Their attempts to recall these cognitive maps allowed them to

mentally reconstruct the area before it was covered by the lakes.

Summary

Although people remember the poverty and privations of life from Berkeley County in

the 1930s, they remember the past somewhat positively. During their formative years, the

interviewees experienced the hard work of farming, the miles of traveling to school, and the lack

of modern conveniences that most people take for granted today. Moncks Corner in the 1930s

was a rough-and-tumble place owing to poverty and the presence of illegal corn whiskey.

Entwined with this dangerous industry was a political system entrenched in corruption and

occasional violence. Most of the interviewees viewed this era, however, as one in which neighbors helped each other through rough times. The experience of African Americans, while

similar to that of whites in the levels of poverty they experienced, was significantly different in

their lack of employment and their disenfranchisement in democratic participation.

Their recollections of the 1930s basin landscape before inundation demonstrate that

interviewees thought of the vast shallow basin area as unique and irreplaceable. The historical

significance of the basin landscape was mostly endowed by its past use as agricultural land that

supported a flourishing economy and lifestyle (for the planters, at least) for years before the Civil

War. The sense of place inherent in the landscape, however, came from the activities and

experience the interviewees had in the antediluvian basin, where they spent time playing, riding,

hunting, swimming, and fishing. They remember the farms, the forests, the communities, and

their family connections to the land. Finally, they recall the attempts of the plantation families to

maintain a way of life that harkened back to the prosperity of the rice- and cotton-planting era.

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The interviewees described the basin as having large expanses of forests and swamp as well as farmland and human settlements. The maps and images from this era show that the basin was not entirely swamp as had been characterized by the promoters of Santee Cooper but that there were cleared and cultivated lands owned by people with ancestral ties to the basin area.

The interviewees’ own cognitive maps of the area demonstrate that their memories and experiences were embedded in the landscape that was to be inundated. They remain aware of landscape features such as shared landmarks and the natural characteristics of the basin where they spent some of their youth. The memories associated with the former landscape help to reconstruct past meanings of the landscape and life in the basin before inundation.

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CHAPTER 6

A LANDSCAPE OF GROWTH: SANTEE COOPER CONSTRUCTION

The galvanic event that was Santee Cooper changed the lives of the area’s residents in

countless ways. It brought massive change to Berkeley County at every level: economic, social, and environmental. The scale of the mammoth construction, the expanse of the clearing, and the employment of thousands altered the face of the region. In addition, the mental maps of the inhabitants were altered to accommodate the rapid changes to their surroundings. The people interviewed remember the project as a momentous event in their lives’ histories. Each of the participants was able to speak at length about Santee Cooper. They expressed their memories of and opinions about its building and the amazement with which they regarded the newly- constructed landscape.

It is not surprising that the participants’ view of the project’s construction stage as an important event matches the dominant political view of Santee Cooper. The arrival of the project, similar to that of roads or other large developments in some villages, impressed people with its technology and scale. The salient and shared schemas of the actual project construction phase of Santee Cooper included the growth of Moncks Corner, the astonishing engineering feats

of the project, and the spread of electricity into homes.

This set of schemas cover several domains, such as changes in social life, economic

advantages, and technology. Each of these lower-level schemas fits easily under the overarching

schema of progress. These schemas influenced the interviewees’ views of the basin landscape

by changing its appearance and purpose. Indeed, the construction phase of Santee Cooper exemplifies the notion of progress in its immediate economic impact on Berkeley County and its major displays of technological manipulation of the earth.

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Growth and Activity in Moncks Corner

Seemingly overnight, the influx of workers and money and the bustle of activity transformed the social landscape, which changed from one of rural countryside and sleepy town to one of general commotion and expanded economic and social opportunities. Although deeply in a statewide economic depression, people viewed the newly-engineered basin landscape as one that could provide progress and promise for the future. The work on the Santee Cooper project impressed and amazed the people who recall what it was like to live in Berkeley County at that time.

I asked the participants what they felt about the project when they found out it was coming to the area. A large majority of them said they supported it. Glenn Edwards said, “I was small, but I was all for it.” As a young girl, Betty Parker recalled, “The whole project was just exciting. I was glad to see it coming.” Some went as far to say that “everybody” in the area was

“glad,” “amazed,” and “thankful” that Santee Cooper was coming because it would bring work in the form of new jobs to a depressed economy. They recognized that President Roosevelt ostensibly established Santee Cooper as a make-work project to provide jobs in an area with limited economic prospects. A few interviewees remember that the merchants in town were

“tickled pink” (Green) because they would benefit from selling goods to all the new workers coming in to the area. Several said they supported Santee Cooper in the beginning because they knew it would help and be an asset to the community.

One of the immediate impacts of Santee Cooper that people remembered was the influx of people into Berkeley County, especially into the sleepy little town of Moncks Corner.

Thousands of people were put to work on the project, and men had to work long, hard hours to quickly make progress on the clearing and construction. At peak construction, the project

207 employed 12,500 people (Want 1941a:G-1). However, developers employed many more over the scope of the construction because of a high rate of turnover. Lawrence O’Neal* said while the project was underway, Moncks Corner became “a regular madhouse” and “it was a busy time.” Many different kinds of people came to work, bringing their families, their money, and their business. The influx of new residents ushered in a period of “constant change and meeting new people” (Kennedy), including a few “roughnecks” (Lee). The sheer number of people entering the area was “mind-boggling” for many. The in-town population doubled in just four years, but this figure did not account for the provisional housing in the surrounding areas (Mrs.

Newell 1941:III-2). Census reports from 1940 revealed that Berkeley County’s population had grown from 22,236 in 1930 to 27,128 in 1940, a twenty-two percent increase. The town of

Moncks Corner, according to census records, went from 623 persons in 1930 to 1,165 in 1940, an eighty-seven percent increase in population (The News and Courier 1941a:12). Workers were brought in from all counties in South Carolina since the federal government’s plan was to spread job relief over the entire state. The most highly represented counties in 1940 were Berkeley

(589), Charleston (537), Richland (563), Florence (320), Orangeburg (257), and Greenville (224)

(The News and Courier 1940a:16).

The project was indeed a turning point for Moncks Corner, which soon became a busy town. Many interviewees found so many newcomers exciting. Betty Parker said, “That stirred me, to see all these other people coming in and know that there was some other way to live.”

She also recalled that people employed in project construction jobs had more money and could buy more than her family was able to. Raymond Miller* remarked, “Everything was slow around here, but after that project come in, money started kind of flowing around.” The local

Ford dealership began earning a great deal of money, both from large Santee Cooper orders of

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new cars and trucks and from newcomers to the area, some of whom could afford to buy vehicles

with their new wages. Thousands of workers on the project visited the local banks to cash their

weekly paychecks. Several interviewees had jobs at retail shops in town and said they were

impressed with how much purchasing power the new workers had.

The writer of an article in The News and Courier detailed how some stores benefited

from the workers’ arrival. Green’s Market Grocery expanded, adding refrigeration and a great

variety of food products to its shelves (The News and Courier 1941m:3-F). Two pharmacies, the

Moncks Corner Pharmacy (affiliated with Rexall and owned by a native from Pennsylvania) and

the Delta Pharmacy, served the prescription, sundries and soda fountain needs of the growing

town. To satiate the public’s emerging appetite for all things electric, Sinclair Orvin ran a retail

storefront offering refrigerators, radios, electric ranges, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and

electric irons (The News and Courier 1941m:3-F). The Law & Mims Mercantile near the

railroad tracks sold most anything, including building materials (The News and Courier 1941n:4-

F). By 1941, several automobile outlets and gas stations were thriving as well. R. A. and E. M.

Thornley & Company provided tires, gas, and mechanical repair. Three auto dealerships, Ford,

Pontiac, and General Motors, met the growing demand for vehicles.

Up to the end of 1941, The News and Courier reported that Santee Cooper workers and

contractors were paid a total of $8,321,702. This figure, however, does not include the ten

million dollar sum the federal government allotted to the WPA for its labor (The News and

Courier 1941z:B-15). The Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded that Santee Cooper workers spent

one-third of their incomes on food. Housing used up another average of 15.5 percent and

payment for utilities another 12.2 percent, followed by clothing, transportation, and then recreation (The News and Courier 1941t:A-7).

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The WPA set up more than thirty-one camps established in Berkeley County to house thousands of Santee Cooper workers (The News and Courier 1941x:A-14). Several interviewees recalled these looked similar to army camps, and that some workers brought in from other parts of the state would go home on the weekends. Lawrence O’Neal reminisced about visiting the

WPA camps, describing the living quarters as “little one-room shacks, sometimes three or four people bunking in one little cabin.” The workers ate in a mess hall and enjoyed recreational facilities with indoor and outdoor games, a piano, and a radio (The News and Courier 1941x:A-

14). Frequently each cabin had its own privy, but workers shared a main shower or bath house.

Raymond Clark remembered seeing the little cabins with double-decker bunks inside. As a boy, he visited them with his grandfather, who was the quartermaster for the camps and kept tabs on supplies such as flour, coffee, rice, beans and meat.

The close quarters of the WPA camps required special measures to protect the workers’ health. The State Board of Health had to test and approve the water supply before a camp could be established. Doctors, medical care, and inoculations were provided to prevent diseases. With so many men expected to share living accommodations, the Health and Sanitation Division of the Authority sought to quash the spread of communicable diseases. To be hired by the WPA, workers had to submit to blood tests: the Wasserman test was used to detect syphilis, and blood was examined for malaria. Workers had to pay fifty cents for these tests. They were also inoculated against smallpox and typhoid before being brought in to work on the project. The local physician, Dr. Fishburne, was even known to shut down mess hall operations because of a lack of water and a “fly nuisance” (Health and Sanitation Division 1939).

These WPA camps provided housing for only a small proportion of the laborers; otherwise, the flood of workers created a severe housing shortage. Former town residents widely

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agreed that “You could not find a place to live in Moncks Corner” (Parker). Some people stayed

in town at the Rigby Hotel, which was always full. The need for housing was so great that the

government brought in scores of wheeled trailer homes to house workers in temporary

settlements along U. S. Highway 52 near Moncks Corner and St. Stephens (The News and

Courier 1941t:A-7).

People would look everywhere for a place to live, asking residents of the town if they had a spare room for rent. Isabelle Carter recalled that after her grown siblings left home, her mother began to rent out rooms to some workers. Julia Kennedy and Mary Nelson said their parents also rented out spare rooms. Emma Lee recalled that when her father came to work for Santee

Cooper, he had to leave his family behind until he could find a place for them to live. He slept on a cot at Mr. Ayers’s boarding house before finally finding a place with just a kitchen and a bedroom and bringing the rest of the family with him to live in those two rooms, which they considered themselves lucky to have. She recalled their difficult adjustment to living in those

conditions – “we had a real rough time of it” – until they had a house. Others were so hard-

pressed to find rooms to rent or places to stay that they sometimes lived for a while in tents or

other substandard housing, taking “whatever had a roof over it,” according to Barbara Wilson.

Mrs. Newell wrote that families in Moncks Corner would clean, renovate, enlarge, and paint converted garages, barns and even chicken houses to rent “to people who were in the streets with

no place to go” (1941:III-2). Some families constructed small sheds at the rear of their

properties and rented them out. These temporary houses “were just forever filled up” said Betty

Parker. Many families in the area earned extra income by providing those in need of shelter a

place to rent.

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Many people boarded in houses that were opened to take in workers, a fact recalled by

several of the interviewees. For instance, Frances Bailey’s mother cooked for the boarding

house across the street. She said her mother would prepare big suppers at the end of the work

day, and the workers “came religiously, because Mama was a great cook, oh my.” Frances

washed the dishes herself. Gerald Scott*, whose family came as engineering contractors for the project, grumbled about the lack of restaurants in Moncks Corner at that time. He said, “If you

didn’t eat at a boarding house, you didn’t eat!” The breakfasts he ate at Ayerses’ boarding house

included large platters of fried eggs, bacon, and sausage, with grits poured over the eggs in the middle. A Californian, Gerald complained, “When you got your eggs, they had grits all stuck to

it.” As Gerald attests, the customs of the out-of-state workers sometimes clashed with local

ones.

The great influx of people into this “tiny little town” led to increased social and

entertainment opportunities. Sally Thomas* remembered “all the good-lookin’ boys that came

into town” to work on the project. She met her husband when she was thirteen and he was

seventeen, when he moved with his family from California to work on the project.

Entertainment options proliferated in the town. The Carter family hosted dances every Saturday

night; many local girls and Santee Cooper workers attended. The dances were held in a

warehouse building and featured an orchestra from Summerville. As a teenager, Frances Bailey

said she went to the dances and met a lot of newcomers. She said she had dates with boys who

worked for Santee Cooper.

The movie house run by Mr. Fridell on Railroad Avenue provided additional

entertainment for the newcomers, adults and children alike. Betty Parker reminisced about going

to the Saturday afternoon matinees as a child. As a young teen, Dale Green worked there,

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recalling that “we’d have a whole full crowd of [. . .] those WPA fellows on Saturday” to see the

cowboy and western films. Another source of entertainment several miles away in the nearby

town of Summerville was the “water wheel”, which was a popular spot for teenagers to meet and

mingle.

Other recreation opportunities united the young people who were new to town with those

who were born in Moncks Corner. A small pond was built where the young people went

swimming. The growth inspired more social occasions, such as parties and visits with new

friends. Mary Nelson said that, unbeknownst to her parents, she would go to parties at houses

that sold liquor. There, they would have “pushed all the furniture back,” and people would be

playing music and dancing. “Of course, I wasn’t supposed to be there,” she said, laughing.

The influx of people changed the social relations of the town. Whereas before all the

residents knew each other, now the town was full of strangers who brought different habits and

values. Churches changed and grew as well. Betty Parker recalled that the First Baptist Church

originally had a small congregation, but after Santee Cooper came, they would have “a church

full of people.” Two of the main churches in town began building additions to accommodate the

growing congregations (Newell 1941). Many of the people stayed and established their families,

with their next generations growing up in Moncks Corner.

The local press remarked on the changes to the town of Moncks Corner. Such

developments as paved streets and sidewalks, a library, new schools, waterworks, and a new fire

department were cited as improvements brought about by the influx of new people and money into the town (The News and Courier 1941m:3-F). Overall, the Santee Cooper project was

bringing in people and money.

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Exciting Features of the Project

I asked several people what the most exciting features of Santee Cooper were, since the

project was widely touted as a triumphant feat of engineering and cleared land. These features

became prominent aspects of their memories of that time period. People recalled taking Sunday

afternoon drives out to the basin to watch the workers proceed on the clearing and construction.

Families would drive from all over the state just to see the work being done on Santee Cooper.

Mary Nelson said that on Sunday afternoons, her father would put all of them in the car, and they would ride up to Cross and Eadytown “just to see how, you know, they cut the trees and really how much damage they were doing to the country.” Figures 6.1 and 6.2 exhibit what the clearing work looked like. Figure 6.1 shows a man using primitive scaffolding and hand saws to cut through a large cypress tree, several feet up from the base of the tree. Figure 6.2 features the area after it was cleared of its tall standing trees and underbrush, leaving only stumps behind. As

more roads were built for construction and clearing, viewing the project up close and gauging its

weekly progress became easier.

The project’s first steps, once approved, were exploratory geological surveys and clearing

of the basin. “Old man Joey Haywood” was the first surveyor to mark the territory for Santee

Cooper (Adams). The elevation of the proposed reservoirs was set at a maximum of seventy-five

feet above sea level, with a proposed maximum drawdown of sixty feet above sea level and a

normal level of sixty-seven feet above sea level (WPA 1940:1). However, Santee Cooper also

had to purchase land within one hundred feet of the proposed shoreline, so they were forced to

buy 193,000 acres total (The News and Courier 1941h:14). The WPA cleared the land at the

same that that Santee Cooper was making purchases on the remainder of the properties in the

basin.

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Gerald Scott and his family were brought in by Santee Cooper to carry out the

exploratory geological engineering work for the basin. His father’s firm conducted the borings

for the project, which involved drilling cores deep into the earth with a cylinder to take out a

cross section of the rock layers underneath the surface. They then sample and analyzed those layers to determine the geological foundation for the dams and reservoirs and whether the rock was hard enough for the project’s purposes. Because empty voids were found within the earth during this exploratory drilling, the project engineers had to discover a way to fill the holes so the reservoirs would hold water and seepage would be prevented. The contractors mixed a slurry out of sand clay and cement in the trucks and pumped the mixture through a hose into the drill holes to fill the voids deep underneath the surface; they would then move to fill the next hole.

Because the pump couldn’t be shut off, the men worked three shifts at a time using six drill rigs.

Said Scott, “Every two and a half feet we drilled a hole a hundred feet deep and then they would drill in between [. . .] until [chuckles] they filled it up.” The purpose, he said, was “to build a crust up in the top there where that water couldn’t get down underneath.”

Several of the interviewees recalled a viewing stand (Figure 6.3) that featured several

rows of bleachers underneath a shelter. The Authority set up this stand near the construction of

the dam so people could visit the worksite and watch the formation of the lakes and dams. The

viewing area also featured a map of the projected appearance of the lakes and powerhouse. Tens

of thousands of people visited the site from South Carolina and from many other states and

countries. In 1941, the Pinopolis and Santee dam sites received 7,500 visitors in the month of

July alone (Want 1941a:G-1). In addition, Santee Cooper education employees assembled a

scale model and diorama of the project, which they exhibited at the State House in Columbia, the

State Fair and even the World’s Fair in New York (The News and Courier 1940e:5). Such

215 promotion of its impressive engineering feats helped generate a lot of excitement about the project.

Most people felt personally affected by the clearing of the land. They were impressed with the landscape changes taking place before their eyes. Thousands of trees were being cut and taken out of the formerly wooded basin area by the WPA workers. This pre-inundation clearing accomplished the primary objective of malarial control by creating a “clean shoreline and a clean water surface”; its secondary objective was providing for adequate navigation through the lake and channels (WPA 1940:1). The engineers did not want debris like tree limbs, logs, and brushy material to float (“flotage”) and attract mosquitoes after inundation. The contract required that all timber, brush and stumps between the sixty-seven-foot and seventy- five-foot contour levels of the new reservoirs be cut not over eighteen inches above the ground.

This contour level rule was expanded to a mile within the seventy-five-foot contour of the proposed lakes (WPA 1940:3). A channel cleared of all obstructions above the fifty-foot elevation was also shaped for navigation.

Instead of using machinery and power tools, the workers cleared all 105,000 acres of the land with the help of mules (The News and Courier 1941h:14). Valuable timber was removed from the basin, but the trees and brush left behind were piled up and burned, as per the specifications of the WPA (WPA 1940). Daniel Evans was amazed that so much of it was done by hand, without power tools. He said, “You just think, back in those days, there was people pulling cross-cut saws and cutting the trees down. They didn’t have chain saws” (Evans). The

WPA employees cut the trees off several feet above the ground, leaving tall stumps everywhere.

The lower basin, to become the Pinopolis reservoir, was entirely cleared of trees. There, workers cut down the trees and, with the aid of mules, pulled them into a pile. The piles of brush and

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trees would then be burned. Sometimes, a man known as “Dynamite Pete” used explosives to

blow up some of the stumps in the cleared area, an activity observed with fascination by an

impressionable young Bill Anderson.

At first, the WPA workers attempted to haul the valuable timber out of the basin;

accounts of the amounts removed range from an upward estimate of 200 million feet of timber

(The News and Courier 1941s:A-2) to forty-nine million (Santee Cooper 1950). Two million of

this, mostly pine, was used to construct the Pinopolis dam and power house (The News and

Courier 1941s:A-2). Thirty million feet of timber alone was sold from the Authority to the

Camp Manufacturing Company in Russellville to be sawed and processed (Carroll 1941:3-F).

The original grounds of the sawmill camp would be lost to the lake.

There was so much timber, however, that Santee Cooper didn’t know what to do with it all. Additionally, political urgency to complete the project precluded the WPA from finishing

the clearing of both reservoir areas. In a controversial decision, the PWA and the Health and

Sanitation Division approved the WPA’s commencement of “wiring down” the timber to the

ground surface of the basin. Workers bound de-limbed logs with wire cables, anchored at both

ends with 2 ¼ inch staples or 20d nails, and tied and stapled them to stumps on the bottom (WPA

1940:7). Conventional wisdom said the trees and stumps would rot, so workers left them there to

be covered by the thousands of acres of water.

Later, as the urgency of World War II hastened the dam’s construction, President

Roosevelt issued an executive order to hurriedly finish the dam so the water could be released to

generate electricity. Since Santee Cooper was soon to supply electricity to Pittsburgh

Metallurgical, the Navy Yard, and other war industries, it needed the speed the project’s

completion. To this end, workers cut all trees from the shoreline to half a mile out and tied the

217 timber to the remaining stumps; the trees beyond that line they left standing in the upper reservoir area. They stopped clearing before all the trees were removed and flooded the upper lake because preparations for war were necessary. As they flooded the lakes, the timber left behind became water-logged and stayed down.

Others were impressed with the massive excavations of earth for the dam and channels

(Figure 6.4). David Randolph said, “I was very curious about that great big hole in the ground.”

They dug the channel for the Tailrace canal just below the dam with a huge crane. People said they would visit the project on Sunday afternoons to see how much workers were digging

(Edwards). Julia Kennedy described how exciting she found the canal and power house excavations. The hole they dug “was so cavernous and huge it was just awesome” (Kennedy).

During the excavation process, workers digging a drainage ditch uncovered the giant fossil of a Pleistocene whale, whose remains demonstrate that some of the basin ground was once part of the ocean floor (The News and Courier 1941u:A-10). The fossil was buried between layers of limestone and marl. Several Indian mounds were also deemed interesting, but the Authority did not have funds for scientific investigations and excavations of the sites.

A majority of the interviewees reminisced too about the construction of the power house

(Figure 6.5), also called the hydro plant. Daniel Evans considers the project to be “one of the seven wonders of the world” because of the tremendous amount of labor involved. He was impressed with how they built the powerhouse, especially the round forms for the turbines.

Workers used hand saws to cut the wood to encase the turbines (Evans). Speaking also of the power house, constructed out of concrete and steel, Henry Davis said it was hard to imagine “that big a hunk of concrete in one place.” He further commented, “It had those two by two square steel reinforcing bars, forty feet long, they could walk right up like a ladder, it was amazing!”

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(Davis). The wonder people felt over the building of the new dam and power house helped to make it an extraordinary destination. France Bailey’s husband proposed to her at the site of the unfinished power house in 1940. She said of the Pinopolis power house, “It was special at the time, it really was. It was something he wanted to see.”

The turbines (Figure 6.6) were another curiosity that combined engineering and power production on a large scale. The four 40,000 horsepower main turbines were manufactured in

Virginia and Wisconsin but were assembled on site. Two of them have adjustable blades, while the other two have fixed blades. A fifth turbine was produced but only serves as a back-up.

George Adams was astonished by how the turbines generated electricity. “The power they can make by turning the wheel, water runnin’ over wheels and turnin’ it [. . .] is amazing, it really is.”

Other excitements of the Santee Cooper construction included the size and amount of machinery that had never been seen in those parts before. Large trucks, bulldozers, and other earth-moving equipment were brought in from other parts of the country to help complete the construction of the dams. Barbara Wilson said, “I never saw such big tractors and things, in my life, and I haven’t seen ’em since.” Isabelle Carter marveled at the “big ol’ machines they had, you had to go look at ’em, you know.” Talking about the construction evoked memories of watching the huge machines at work as a source of entertainment and awe in Moncks Corner.

The biggest, most “unbelievable” machine was the walking monighan that was used to dig the diversion canal and the Tailrace canal. It was a massive excavation machine, as big as a house, and it walked on so-called feet instead of rolling because it was too heavy to sit on wheels

(Randolph). It sat on the bank of the canal it was excavating and extended its 190-foot-long booms, like a dragline, using twelve-cubic-yard and eighteen-cubic-yard buckets to scoop the

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earth (Moore 1941). Dale Green estimated the dimensions of the machine as fifty feet long and

about two to three stories high, big enough to drive a dump truck underneath. Joseph Hammond

described it as “having long hind things, kind of like a duck.” It would pick up its back legs and

slip forward. He said it was shipped by rail to the area to be assembled on site, and that the

smallest piece on the machine weighed 500 pounds. He said, “We drove a Mercury sedan in that

bucket. We’d never seen anything that big!” When it crossed the highway, he said, the

monighan “mashed [the road] in.” The machine “walked” from where it was assembled down to

Stoney Landing, a journey of almost a mile that took four days, because it moved only about

thirty feet in twenty minutes (Anderson). There, it started digging the canal: “And boom it

would put the dirt on this side and put the dirt on that side” (Anderson).

Concurrent with the work of clearing and excavation was the creation of the dams and dikes. For this process, the millions of cubic yards of sand and clay dug from other sections,

called borrow pits, was spread in layers and packed down with the help of a “sheeps-foot roller”

that compacted the layers of material to make them watertight (The News and Courier 1941y:B-

12). The roller used its large metal drums, covered with metal “teeth,” to pack down the earth.

People were also impressed by the massive concrete mixer, several stories tall and used to combine the gravel with the concrete.

The creation of the dams and power house required the improvements of new roads and

bridges in the immediate area. While the construction of new and paved roads was being carried

out by the state highway department, other transportation options had to be added as well. One

of them was the train trestle for the Atlantic Coast Line that had to be built over the new Tailrace

canal. Two of the state’s main highways in that area, Highway 52 near Moncks Corner and

Highway 15 in the upper basin, had to be rerouted. The Highway 52 bridge was placed near the

220 train trestle across the Tailrace canal. A large-span bridge was constructed across the upper lake to accommodate Highway 15 near Parler, connecting the cities of Sumter and Orangeburg.

Many of the interviewees recognized that Santee Cooper was created to provide jobs, a total of 12,500 at the project’s peak, for people in the state. The people living in the area at that time benefited from the availability of those new jobs, and many people in Berkeley County worked on the project or knew others who did. Said Joseph Hammond, “There was no jobs here.

We took whatever we could get.” He worked as a supervisor for the Health and Sanitation

Division, whose main job it was to control the mosquito population and thus eradicate malaria in the region. Leonard Taylor* was employed under him as a health division worker. His occupation required spraying standing water with larvicidal oil to kill mosquitoes and clearing areas of bushy undergrowth. Gerald Scott, the man who came with his family from California to work as an engineering contractor, said his father and uncle had a crew of about a hundred men working in three shifts to finish the concrete work. Vance Newton* first worked as a grass planter on the dike; later he worked on the rip-rap to hold the dike together. Others remember their family members working for the early stages of the project, such as in the clearing, dredging and construction phases.

The people who were able to work some of the earlier jobs recall that Santee Cooper paid

“fairly good” wages at the time, certainly better than the area had ever seen. A few said that hiring and salaries were not always fair, but that had much to do with politics. For example, a former Santee Cooper employee said he and almost everybody else in his division made three dollars a day, while a less qualified politician’s son who was hired made five dollars a day.

There were a few incidences of peaceful strikes among small portions of the unionized labor

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force working for some of the sub-contractors on the project, but these groups were deadlocked

for no longer than a couple of weeks at a time.

Everyone interviewed knew someone who had at one time or another worked at Santee

Cooper. Even after the project was built, several of the people I interviewed held jobs there at

some point. Michael King recalled being a “grunt” for the men setting up the transmission lines,

handing tools to the workmen installing the large electricity poles. Kenneth Freeman was hired

as a turbine operator. Another man worked in the legal department, searching land titles for new

transmission lines that had to be built throughout the state.

Santee Cooper work, especially in the early years, was not without danger and injury.

Kenneth Freeman* had an older brother who was killed on the construction of the Santee Cooper

dikes. He said it was the first Santee Cooper fatality. His brother was driving a dump truck,

hauling dirt, but the truck was carrying so much weight that it turned over on him and he could

not get out. Naomi Dillard recalled that her brother also worked on the construction of the dam,

but that a crane dropped something onto the scaffolding he was on, and he fell and broke his

back, living for only another year and a half. A few other interviewees said they too knew of

men being hurt in the early days of the project. One woman whose cousin fell while working

remarked that Santee Cooper didn’t have work safety features like protective harnesses back then

(Thomas).

Other reported misfortunes of the Santee Cooper construction included a fatal February

1940 accident in which a man who was blasting stumps with dynamite was hit with flying debris

(Rice 1940a:4). In that same month, three men drowned crossing the Santee River when their raft capsized. Not until three months later were all the bodies found, despite repeated efforts to locate them (Rice 1940b). Common injuries reported were nail puncture wounds from

222 worksites, especially to the feet, and loss of fingers by inexperienced workmen using pipe- cutting equipment.

These injuries occurred at the time that Santee Cooper was developing and implementing worker safety programs, including the use of protective equipment and safety education as well as injury investigations and record keeping. The Health and Sanitation Division’s Safety

Engineer encouraged, but could not require, the contracting companies to implement safer building practices. Accidents were investigated and recorded to prevent future ones. Safety features put into practice during construction included stairways and handrails instead of scaffolding for the walls of the lock; the use of helmets, goggles, and rope harnesses; and the clearing of debris to prevent injuries caused by nails. Santee Cooper accidents were reported to be below the national average (The News and Courier 1941w:14-A).

Several of the interviewees recognized that Santee Cooper sped up the construction and clearing because American involvement in World War II was imminent. They commented that

Santee Cooper had to hasten the project’s completion to provide power for nearby war-related industries. Jobs during the early phases of Santee Cooper led to jobs in other nearby industries, like defense.

The nascent defense industry was spurred, in part, by the newly available electric power in the region. The Navy Yard at Charleston was one such place where many men, including several I interviewed, went to work building and repairing navy vessels with steel and aluminum.

In 1941, the Navy Yard employed at least 10,000 people in the construction of eighteen destroyers (Collison 1941).

Another factory in Charleston was Pittsburgh Metallurgical, a ferrous alloy plant that manufactured alloys of ferro-silicon, ferro-chromium, and ferro-manganese, all used to produce

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steel (The News and Courier 1941aa:E-10). A South Carolina Planning Board pamphlet encourages the quick completion of the Santee Cooper project so that cheap electricity would be quickly provided for a proposed aluminum plant. It warns of Germany’s dominant aluminum production and cites an urgent United States need for 200,000 tons of the metal to construct

50,000 warplanes. The region near Santee Cooper was touted as an “economical location for [an aluminum] reduction plant” (South Carolina State Planning Board 1940).

Before the United States involvement in World War II, a few interviewees recalled that

Roosevelt himself either signed an executive order or made a call to Santee Cooper authorizing

the project to continue without the upper lakes having been cleared. I could only find documentation, however, that the Office of Production Management for National Defense, not

Roosevelt, informed PWA and Santee Cooper that the project was declared “necessary for national defense” on February 3, 1941 (The News and Courier 1941b:1). Such a designation sped up the clearing and construction work so Santee Cooper could start producing power for

Charleston industries.

Several interviewees recall the grand opening of the powerhouse. There were dignitaries

from the state and federal government. Mary Nelson played trumpet in the Berkeley County

High School band that marched at the opening ceremony. Later, during World War II, the

government brought in soldiers to protect the new power plant in the event of an attack. Persons

wishing to visit the hydropower plant had to get special permission, a written pass, to see it.

It is interesting to note that many of the men I interviewed went into the armed forces in

the early 1940s. These men talked a great deal about their military experiences and what

returning to the United States and resettling in Berkeley County were like. Most of these young

men were just out of high school. Some signed up when they were only seventeen years old, as

224 the army would grant them their high school diplomas if they only had one semester left. In fact, most of the men I talked to were in the military during the 1940s or the 1950s. Several of them participated in the Battle of Normandy, and one of them was a prisoner of war in a German camp who remembered Native Americans in his group using the Navajo language as code. He said many years passed before people believed him that Native Americans were involved in World

War II, until they read about the “Windtalkers” or saw the film. Another interviewee, who worked at the Charleston Navy Yard, recalled his employer sending him to Pearl Harbor to perform sheet metal work after the Japanese attacked. When he returned to Berkeley County only a year later, the basin was filled and people had electricity (Martin).

The Impact of Electricity

The extension of electricity into people’s homes significantly altered both people’s lives and the Berkeley County landscape. The transformation brought lights, power lines (Figure 6.7), and modern conveniences to this rural area. Some of the interviewees recalled having electricity as early as 1934 or 1935, courtesy of Delco generators or the barrel factory in town. While

Santee Cooper was not the first to provide electricity in the area, it expanded the availability of electricity throughout the region with the establishment of transmission lines to more rural places. The Rural Electrification Administration provided grants and loans to local electric cooperatives like the Berkeley Electrical Co-op and the Santee Electric Co-op. Several interviewees recognized that the private power companies spoke vociferously against Santee

Cooper, since it was designed as a public, state-run and government-funded project. David

Randolph explained that those private companies did not spend the money to extend their lines

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“into sparsely settled areas, ’cause they didn’t get a good return on it,” but that they fought the public utility because they knew Santee Cooper would encroach upon their territory.

Whether in town or on a farm, the interviewees said they were thrilled to get electricity.

Kenneth Freeman also noted that he was late in getting electricity but that when it did come, he thought, “My God, that was a miracle.” Daniel Evans said that electricity “made life easier, no doubt about it.” Leonard Taylor admitted, “[Electricity] changed it all; it was a new life.”

The most commonly cited source of excitement was the arrival of electric lights.

Kenneth Freeman recalled that school let out early one day so the children could go home and see the lights being turned on. Joseph Hammond said after getting electricity, “everything was bright.” Several women mentioned that having electric lights relieved them of their hated childhood chores of gathering and filling all the kerosene lamps, trimming the wicks, and cleaning soot from the glass globes. Emma Lee described how getting electricity really changed her life: “Oh, it was amazing. I guess you might say it was just like night and day.” Mary

Nelson described her mischievous curiosity for electric light bulbs and pull cords:

All we had was one little bulb hanging down. And Daddy told me, I was devilish, and he told me, “Whatever you do, don’t you stick your finger in that hole.” Well, nothing but for me to do, was to get up there and unscrew that bulb, stick my finger and pull that switch. And it shocked the fire outta me! (Laughed). I was shocked! (Laughed).

Several other people fondly recalled the lights’ pull cords, for which “you had to search all around in the night” since they hung in the middle of rooms; there were no switchplates on the walls.

Santee Cooper changed the rural landscape by lighting it up at night. Before Santee

Cooper most of the Berkeley County countryside was completely obscured night. “Back in those days,” said David Randolph, “when you traveled after dark, the only thing you saw were the

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headlights on your vehicle.” After Santee Cooper came along, one could see lights in houses and

yards while traveling at night. Several people described having lights as “a beautiful thing.”

Power lines and poles also became part of the newly electrified landscape. The long-leaf pine

trees indigenous to the area made excellent power poles because they were tall and straight, with

few branches.

The other convenience made available with electricity was the refrigerator. People no

longer had to haul ice and maintain iceboxes. Mary Nelson recalled that after electrical lines

were connected to her house, her father when out and bought a refrigerator. “And we took a can

of Carnation milk and made us some ice cream!” she laughed. A freezer or refrigerator allowed

families to save more meat. Families were now able to preserve cuts of beef and other meat by

storing it in the freezer. Having a refrigerator in the home “tickled [them] to death” (Foster).

People also remember the radio as a great source of entertainment. Some were powered

by batteries so did not depend on electricity. Glenn Edwards said his father had a radio, and that

people would come at night on the weekends to listen to the Grand Old Opry or boxing matches

and eat home-made ice cream. Raymond Miller recalled when people would gather around the

radio to listen to Joe Lewis fight. He said, “I don’t know how I got that radio as a poor boy.”

But he admitted that many people bought a radio back then.

People also believed that electricity was cheaper and more reliable after Santee Cooper

was established. Electricity was generally less expensive than kerosene oil used for lamps.

Several people estimated their early electric bills from around seventy-five cents to a dollar and a

half a month. Working at the Berkeley Electric Co-operative for many years, Mary Nelson said that people would call in to complain about a high electric bill in the hot summer months. Air conditioning was not yet widely available; she notes that people were leaving their refrigerator

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doors open at night in an attempt to cool the house. Laughed Mary, “And they wondered why

their bill was so high!”

The South Carolina Power Company was an amalgamation of smaller electricity

producing and transmitting companies in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina. A table in

The News and Courier citing the average use and cost of current shows that electricity consumption increased threefold over the decade before Santee Cooper was completed, from an average use of 502 kilowatt hours per year in 1930 to 1,544 in 1940. The cost of electricity declined steadily through the 1930s, even before Santee Cooper was built. The average rate

South Carolina Power Company users paid for current in 1930 was 8.49 cents per kilowatt hour, whereas by 1940 it was 3.01 cents, declining further to 2.97 cents in the first ten months of 1941

(The News and Courier 1941p:11-F).

With the many new electrical devices available, people soon had to rewire their houses

with heavier wires that accommodated more current and new appliances. First consumers added

lights, then eventually refrigerators, well pumps, radios, electric irons, electric stoves, and

washing machines. Caroline Ingram admits that while she had lights in her house before, the

introduction of electricity has had “a big effect” because now she heats and cools her house using

electrical resources. A number of people recognized that all of these appliances, powered by

electricity, are things that we take for granted today.

Electricity and modernization also extended itself into farm work, mainly because it

enabled farmers to use new types of machinery. Alice Richardson said, “Before, everything was labor, on your hands. You go in the field, you had to use your hands. To plow, to make the crop, you had to plow with a mule, but now they have tractors.” Other interviewees mentioned the availability of power tools and farm machinery that made life easier.

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This spread of electricity into homes and farms was a prominent and widely-shared memory of the interviewees. Although rural electrification was one goal of the expansion of

Santee Cooper, the federal government switched its method from working directly with the state

Rural Electrification Authority to build publicly-funded transmission lines to promoting the development of transmission lines by local cooperatives (The News and Courier 1941q:F-15).

The federal Rural Electrification Administration provided loans, to be repaid over twenty-five years, instead of grants to these cooperatives for building lines (The News and Courier 1941q:F-

15). Rural electrification was also considered vital to military mobilization of the country because of food processing and farm industries that depended on electric power. However, use of the new current generated by Santee Cooper for large industries was most frequently touted in the local press (Valentine 1941, White 1941). The war industries, such as the Charleston Navy

Yard, the Pittsburgh Metallurgical steel alloy plant, and the aluminum plant, were to be the big beneficiaries of the 700,000,000 kilowatt hours of electric power produced (The News and

Courier 1941q:F-15, Want 1941a:G-1). In this era, industries created for defense were “taking all the power this state is able to offer” (Want 1941a:G-1).

Battling the Mosquito Menace

Long known for its swampy, mosquito-infested environment, the Lowcountry basin threatened its inhabitants with the scourge of malaria well after other parts of the country had rid itself of the disease (Humphreys 1996). Over time, Santee Cooper transformed the basin landscape from a damp, malaria-infested environment into a healthier one. Of the Health and

Sanitation Division’s several goals, eradication of malaria from the region was primary.

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The Authority employed several techniques to battle the region’s mosquitoes, especially

those vectors of malaria. The donated papers of Sanitary Engineer Philip Gadsden Hasell, known widely as “Shrimp,” detail many of the daily and weekly tasks of the Mosquito Eradiation

Program carried out by the Authority. By 1941, Shrimp Hasell had estimated that the malarial control work of the Health and Sanitation Division had benefited at least 40,000 people in the basin area (Hasell 1941:5).

The Authority first determined the distribution of the disease-carrying mosquitoes. The

malaria control engineers used a larval dip method to take specimen samples from standing pools

of water like small ponds and even stump holes. They trapped and analyzed flying adult

mosquitoes. Anopheles quadrimaculatus, with a flight range of one mile, was the area’s dreaded,

most common vector, but sanitation engineers found many other pest species, such as Aedes spp. and Culex spp.

Semi-monthly progress reports filed by the Health and Sanitation Division give accounts

of the activities completed by the team of thirty to forty workers (Philip Gadsden Hasell Papers).

The “gangs” of sanitation workers (Figure 6.8) walked and rode in trucks and boats to cover the

forty-mile mosquito abatement program territory, spending most of their working hours clearing

land of bushes and shrubby growth and spraying damp areas with larvicidal oil. Workers

accomplished the spraying by means of tanks mounted on their backs. When areas of the lakes,

canals, and some connecting streams had to be sprayed, boats were employed. In the early years

of Santee Cooper, the oil was not a complex chemical insecticide. Rather, it was diesel engine

oil, purchased straight from the Standard Oil Company and sprayed on standing areas of water.

The oil created a film on the standing water’s surface that blocked oxygen to the mosquito larvae

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(Hammond). This method very effectively prevented mosquitoes from growing to adult stages.

The larvicide operations were suspended during the cold weather months since breeding ceased.

Locals feared that the impoundment of the lakes would foster the new growth and spread

of the malarial mosquitoes. In fact, the processes of clearing and construction of the dams and

canals formed new breeding grounds that required quick treatment. In addition to clearing

underbrush and spraying larvicide, workers dug anti-mosquito ditches in many areas. These

ditches were designed to keep water from stagnating by adequately draining it, thus depriving

mosquitoes of new breeding grounds. These ditches were lined with clay pipes called “tiles” so

that water would move more quickly off the surfaces of the drainage. Hasell doggedly battled

mosquitoes over sixteen square miles of swamp, finding it grueling to traverse and treat the

“numerous deep sloughs, large creeks, and two rivers” and the thick, almost impenetrable

“patches of myrtles, briars and other underbrush” (Hasell 1940:1). In his opinion, each of those wetland features was inimical to his program of mosquito eradication.

Engineers also found opportunities in their work for small-scale experimentation. The

directors of the Health and Sanitation Division sought novel techniques of mosquito abatement

by attending conferences and conferring with colleagues in other impoundment projects, such as

the TVA. They created ponds in controlled areas to attract mosquitoes, which they then

evaluated for potential vectors. The division also conducted experimental trials of dusting and

spraying to determine which methods worked best, and workers tested herbicides and

insecticides for their effectiveness.

The citizens and local health boards of the counties surrounding the project frequently

cooperated with the Health and Sanitation division. To assess the impact of malaria eradication

on the local population, blood smear examinations were conducted on school children in each of

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the five counties affected by Santee Cooper. In 1940, it was found that 233 (7.1%) children of

3,274 Berkeley children examined had malaria parasites. The other counties’ results were as

follows: Calhoun – 1,899 examined, eighty-five (4.5%) infected; Clarendon – 3,705 examined,

144 (3.9%) infected; Orangeburg – 4,636 examined, 261 infected (5.6%); and Sumter – 3244

examined, seventy-six (2.3%) infected (Rice 1940b:3). These numbers do not reflect the

disturbing reality that in some of the most rural schools, over fifty percent of the students were

infected. These high infection rates were most likely found in the segregated African American

schools in low-lying areas (Rice 1940b:3). Malaria continued to be a problem well into the next

year, when it was the most common disease statewide, with fifty cases reported in Berkeley

County during a single week in August (The News and Courier 1941f:12). Cases were mostly of

the quartan malaria type, caused by Plasmodium malariae protozoa, although there were also

cases of tertian malaria, caused by the P. vivax species, and malignant malaria, caused by the P.

falciparum species.

The Health and Sanitation department worried that the trees left standing in the upper

lake could exacerbate the mosquito problem for residents around the upper Santee area, so the

Authority helped homeowners within a one-mile area of the shoreline mosquito-proof their

homes. The sanitation workers screened each house’s windows and doors using regulation

eighteen- or twenty-gauge mesh screen wire. They also educated the inhabitants and encouraged them to burn trash instead of accumulating in their yards, since empty containers would collect water. If the mosquitoes were particularly bad around a home, workers would spray insecticides.

Families with homes within a one-mile range of the basin could expect a weekly visit

from the sanitation workers who came to cut, clear, and spray. Residents called the Sanitation

Division to complain when they found a preponderance of mosquitoes near their homes or in the

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towns. Coordination of efforts with local health departments resulted in a greater availability of quinine as medication. The remarkable coordination and efforts of the Health and Sanitation

Division helped decrease the number of malarial mosquitoes by over ninety percent in the lower lake area and by eighty-one percent in the upper lake area by 1946 (South Carolina Public

Service Authority 1946:6). By 1950, there were only four deaths statewide from malaria (U. S.

Public Health 1953:235). The dogged efforts of Santee Cooper’s Health and Sanitation Division in combination with the changed landscape helped diminish the effects of the malaria scourge on the local population.

Summary

The many awe-inspiring developments of the construction phase of Santee Cooper

caused excitement in the community and around the state. The process of progress brought with

it many new schemas that transformed the landscape in the minds of the participants. Each of

these schemas was of the lower-level variety that contains specific and concrete human

experience and memories. At the same time, these schemas were indexical of a broader scale

and crucial in framing the area’s larger social and landscape changes that made Santee Cooper

such a notable event.

The interviewees recalled the first social impacts to their small and close-knit community

in the form of large numbers of project workers moving into the Berkeley County area with their families. The influx of people led to a temporary housing shortage but brought a rush of activity, both economic and social, to the once quiet town. Additionally, local residents found wage employment, many for the first time. These economic and social changes helped transform the locals’ identity from relatively isolated, rural community to more modernized society.

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The immense scope of the clearing and the construction of the project changed the landscape on an enormous scale. More specific to this construction were the excavation and engineering features of the dam, dikes, and power house, which were all remembered by the interviewees. The landscape of change became one of amazement and wonder to locals and visitors alike.

Other developments resulting from the New Deal money and government programs further contributed to the massive social and cultural changes taking place in Berkeley County.

The availability of electric current in homes was celebrated by locals who could now enjoy the convenience of modern appliances. Malaria control became an important public health benefit of the Santee Cooper program thanks to the thorough work of the Health and Sanitation

Department.

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CHAPTER 7

A CONDEMNED LANDSCAPE: RESETTLEMENT AND FLOODING

As the bustle of economic activity continued in Moncks Corner and the Santee Cooper

project progressed, the widespread clearing of the land made it evident that the basin’s residents

would soon be uprooted from their homes. In this chapter, I examine how people living in or

near the basin reacted to the loss of their homes and to the changes in the landscape. First, I

document how the condemnation process carried out by Santee Cooper affected people who

were made to move, and how they abandoned their traditional homesteads to find new places to

live. The area’s African Americans, the majority of those made to leave the basin, account for a

different set of experiences since government assistance programs helped to relocate many of

them, while others emigrated from the region. Next, I discuss what people thought about the

sight of the cleared basin landscape and its subsequent flooding. Last, I weigh the grief and

bitterness of those who lost their land with the perspectives of those who did not, and how some of the interviewees reflected on and philosophized about progress as being destructive to their inhabited landscape. How did they account for what they and their families lost versus what they gained?

Cultural models allow for variation in the patterning of divergent perspectives, and in this

case, memories (Garro 2000). The social ethnography of memory is a fruitful mode of study for

the examination of negotiated meanings over time. Based on data analysis of the interviews, the

participants can be divided into two main subgroups: those who view Santee Cooper to this day

in terms of loss and destruction, and those who view it solely as beneficial, both economically

and socially. By investigating the backgrounds of the participants with these opposing views, I

discovered that the main determinants of this bifurcation were whether or not the participant’s

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families had to sell their land or move for Santee Cooper. Those who either felt animosity or

resignation towards Santee Cooper and who viewed the project in terms of destruction accounted

for only nine of the total respondents; all of these were belonged to the group whose families had

to sell their land to Santee Cooper. The most vocally resentful of the hydroelectric project and

the flooding of the Santee basin were those descended from the original Huguenot families in the

basin; such accounted for only a handful of participants in my sample since very few of them

lived in the vicinity of Moncks Corner.

This tension provides a basis for the application of the political aspects of memory.

Anthropologists who engage in the politics of memory argue that memories are products of the power struggle over dominant cultural meanings in a society (Rappaport 1990, Roseman 1996).

States Rappaport, “History is a question of power in the present, and not of detached reflection

upon the past” (1990:15). Thus, memories and their significance are also formed in the present.

Partly by controlling memories of the past, those in power can define the present and future and

maintain their political domination (Rappaport 1996). Representations of the past include more

than memories; they include written accounts, images, and official validation of certain versions

of past events. Any social history must include these subaltern voices, however multivocal,

diverse, and contradictory − in some cases − they may be (Andrea Smith 2004).

Those who study the politics of memory seek out the silenced and forgotten memories as

well as the opposing views. These particular viewpoints are most likely to involve lived

experience instead of rote recitations of an official history of an event. To apply the politics of

memory to the study of landscape change is to acknowledge a shift in persons’ views over a transformation of a landscape. The people who thought their land was wrenched away from

them by Santee Cooper retained strong or wistful feelings about the landscape, whereas those

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who remember the creation of Santee Cooper yet did not lose anything recall the era as one of

growth and prosperity.

The voices of the African Americans resettled by the Authority are the most likely to

have been silenced in the condemnation and resettlement process. Their views and opposition

over losing their land were not taken seriously in a society characterized by deep segregation.

While the benefits of the resettlement of the African American families were touted in the press,

the views expressed were only those that would support Santee Cooper’s aims. There is no record of opposition among the African American families from the 1940s: any unfavorable opinions by this group would have been stifled by the white political elite. Only after African

Americans gained political rights were their voices heard about the condemnation and resettlement process. My not being able to uncover the feelings and opinions of the African

American families about losing their land and being made to move partly limits my research.

While my African American interviewees recalled their hardships upon having to move, they did not express how they or their parents felt about being forced from their land. This inability to recover the past perceptions remains a politics of memory issue: some of those memories may never be known because they have been co-opted by the dominant view that local residents are better off today because of the project.

Within this section, the schemas linked to inhabitants’ domains and ancestors are strongly

emotionally salient. Interviewees’ memories from within these domains are more wrenching

because those memories are closely tied the identities they believe were compromised by the

Santee basin’s inundation. It is for these reasons that some people feel such antagonism toward

Santee Cooper today.

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Condemned to Move

The inhabitation of land and one’s ownership of it are keys to creating meaning and

identity of place. The construction of Santee Cooper threatened this meaning. The project

would destroy not only people’s homes but also an entire inhabited, historically significant

landscape. The burden of sacrifice for those who lived on basin land would not be equally

shared among the residents of the state.

The loss of people’s homes and land has happened countless times throughout human

history. Some displacements are due to natural catastrophes, while others are caused by similar

dam-building projects. Erickson detailed the disaster of the sudden Buffalo Creek flood which

resulted from a break in a local mining dam in 1972 (1976). The flood killed over a hundred

people and displaced hundreds more in the West Virginia town. The resettlement of the village

into trailer camps led to a loss of “communality” (Erickson 1975). Erickson likened this close-

knit feeling of neighborliness to Toennies’ Gemeinschaft, or a sense of community based on traditional ties and interdependence (1976). The aftermath of the disaster and displacement led to disorientation, as the terrain to which inhabitants were moved was different. The dislocation caused severe cases of demoralized despondency and suspicion of one’s neighbors. Generally, their system of cultural meaning deteriorated as the communal bonds of their traditional mountain society weakened (Erickson 1976).

In Tennessee, the Norris Basin residents faced similar detrimental effects to their

livelihoods and loss of community as a result of the TVA’s largest resettlement, which involved

over 3,000 families. The displaced subsistence farmers, many of them tenants, had to spend too

much money to buy adequate or even marginal agricultural lands since the relocation drove up

the prices of neighboring land. McDonald and Muldowny called the TVA’s attempt to relocate

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the Norris Basin residents as “ineffectual” and “detrimental” because the Authority lacked

enough the money, capital, and innovation to help the families (1982:254). They admit that

some of the gains among the displaced people include direct employment with the TVA and the

improvement of roads, but they cite rural electrification benefits as uneven at best (McDonald

and Muldowny 1982). The community’s major demise was the outmigration of many residents

from the somewhat overpopulated rural areas.

Current instances of development for economic gain continue to force people to leave

their land and homes to this day. Urban changes like gentrification engender an exodus of

lower-income residents because of rising property values and taxes (Neil Smith 1996). Both intentional and unintentional cases of urban and suburban capital investment and development generally exacerbate inequalities among those who can afford to live or stay in a particular location versus those who cannot. The detrimental impact of such large-scale eviction for

gentrification is disproportionately shared by ethnic minorities (Neil Smith 1996).

Another major trend of displacement occurred across America as bulldozers razed the

rural countryside to build suburban housing developments, where many Americans now live

(Rome 2001). The loss of special places and rural communities to modern suburban life has

shifted our identity such that we are emotionally disconnected from the land. The loss of these

places leads to grief, what Peter Read calls “place-bereavement,” which he considers to be

indicative of distress in contemporary society (1992). The impact of the loss of place has

broadened to a decline in close community ties and neighborly cooperation.

Santee basin residents experienced the loss of their homes, community and places of

attachment. As the clearing progressed, the imminent flooding of the basin required all those

living there to leave their homes and land. In 1941, there were 901 families in the Santee basin,

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totaling over 4,000 people. The project’s promoters, as discussed in earlier chapters, portrayed

the basin as a wasteland. The Authority estimated that the basin contained only 29,900 acres of

active farm land, 67,800 acres of swamp land, and 96,300 acres of “cutover” land (The News and

Courier 1941k:12). Joseph Hammond, an interviewee, recalled that Santee Cooper’s supporters

persuaded people in the state to believe “there wasn’t anything but swamp. But that was wrong.

There was some nice farms out there. Nice farms.” Further, the Authority claimed that only fifteen large landholders owned eighty-five percent of the land (The State 1941:II-16). The single largest landholder, the Brooklyn Cooperage company of New York, sold its 60,000 acres and its timber rights to the Authority for $1,071,000 (The News and Courier 1939c:1). Once

Santee Cooper acquired this large parcel, the WPA began clearing it before purchasing the

remaining needed acreage, since the project could only be finished on time if clearing work were

begun immediately.

Most of the white landowning families based in Pinopolis actively protested changes to the state’s eminent domain law, approved May 31, 1939, by the state legislature to expedite the construction of Santee Cooper. The Oakland Club, a gentlemen’s hunting preserve whose membership comprised mainly wealthy Northerners, including Nicholas Roosevelt of

Philadelphia, took the Authority to court over the new law. They wanted to prevent the

Authority from taking their land with a fee simple title (as opposed to an easement that could eventually revert back to owners if their land were not flooded). The verdict supporting The

South Carolina Public Service Authority’s eminent domain law was later upheld in a circuit court of appeals (The News and Courier 1940b:14).

The condemnation procedures sparked a vocal protest from the basin landholders.

Ashmore reported on the Authority’s cynicism toward the landholders’ opposition. Some

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viewed the landholders’ outcry as a “synthetic” device for obtaining “the highest possible price

for poor land they are secretly glad to be rid of” (Ashmore 1939:9). The Authority characterized

the remainder of the protests as sentimental and “hysterical.”

However, it could not be denied that the process of condemnation was painful for many families “kicked . . . by the boot of progress” (McNeely 1939:III-2). The Authority would send

in appraisers to determine the land’s worth and make an offer. If the offer were rejected, the

property would be condemned. During the years 1939 to 1940, the legal condemnations were

printed in the Berkeley Democrat and exhorted the owners of those properties to contact the land department at Santee Cooper immediately. If they did not reply, the Authority condemned and

seized the land. A three-man Board of Referees (one appointed by the Authority, one by the owner, and the third by the court) would determine the value, which in some cases could be appealed in a state court jury trial (if under $3,000 in value) or in federal court (Ashmore

1939:9). The Authority deposited the purchase money in an escrow account for the former

landowner to retrieve.

Many of the people I talked to were directly affected by the land buying and condemnation of Santee Cooper. Even if they were not originally from the basin, all the interviewees seemed to know people who had lost their land to the lakes. After all, 1,326 separate parcels had to be acquired by the Authority (Santee Cooper 1950). David Randolph said, “Some of them lost everything they had as far as what they were concerned. I know some people who lost all of the farm and moved away from here.” Bill Anderson recalled that his family’s 720 acres were “lost to the lake” when they sold the land to Santee Cooper.

The interviewees also voiced their complaint that Santee Cooper did not pay much

money for the land; at least, they did not pay what people thought the land was worth. From

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within a limited budget, the Authority offered the price it wished to pay; the owners had to

accept that purchase price because the government would condemn the land anyway. George

Adams reported that his family received only nineteen dollars an acre for timberland, while it

was estimated the Authority usually paid twenty-two dollars an acre for cleared farmland. He

remembered with anger his family’s loss of their valuable timberland: “They robbed us!” He

explained, “We had virgin timber in that place that had never been cut, and we coulda got more

[. . .] but [Santee Cooper] went into the courts and condemned it” (Adams). Clifford Martin said

the Authority “took every bit” of his family’s land, only paying nine dollars an acre for the 150

acres of farmland. Others reported receiving more money for the timber that they were able to

sell as hardwood lumber than they received for the land itself. Santee Cooper profited when they

were able to condemn land with hardwoods on it, sometimes earning with the sale of the timber

three times what they paid for the land (Carter).

Often families received only half of what they declared the land to be worth. One

particular piece of property sold for a pittance was the successful decades-old jonquil farm at

Somerset, owned by the Cain sisters. Miss Caroline Cain had averaged a net profit of $312 per

year from the sale of her flowers. After the farm was condemned, a jury set its price at $99.41, an

amount favorable to the Authority (Kirk 1940:7). This settlement sparked a local outrage. There

were a few cases, however, in which the jury declared settlements favorable to landholders, awarding to a lucky few twice what the Authority was offering (The News and Courier 1940d:4).

Those who had owned homes and land in the area widely believed that Santee Cooper had received the better end of almost every land deal, in part because of their strong-armed condemnation tactics. Several people said they feared their rights were being taken away from

them by a bigger government. Other landowners whose properties were condemned thought

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they were being robbed by the government, which would not pay what the owners believed their

lands were worth.

There was some criticism from landholders and others that Santee Cooper took more land

than was needed for the project. Raymond Clark said there were “properties that I couldn’t

conceive why they were within the boundaries” of Santee Cooper. Some of the lands Santee

Cooper claimed to be within the flood zone, but others did not fit this description. Wampee, the

plantation on the end of the Pinopolis peninsula, was an example of this. While it was known that the house at Wampee would never be inundated, the Authority condemned it anyway since it was within the zone. After the lakes were created and much of Wampee remained on dry land, the Cain family filed a lawsuit against Santee Cooper to get their property back but lost the court battle. Today it is a beautiful conference center for Santee Cooper and its board members, located at the tip of the Pinopolis peninsula and with a view of Lake Moultrie on three sides.

Several homesteads fell in the “floodage” area, the hundred-yard zone extending from the

shoreline outward, and were bought or condemned by Santee Cooper. Sally Thomas said the

Authority took much of their farm because, they claimed, the water was going to encroach on it

once the lakes were filled. The water never covered it, but Santee Cooper would not re-sell the

land to her family even though the contract stated that the Authority would do so after twenty

years if the land were not affected by the flooding (Thomas). She said Santee Cooper continues

to find excuses for not returning it to her family.

In December of 1938, the Santee Cooper authorities tried to persuade the landowners to

plant their 1939 crops, since the land was not scheduled to be flooded until 1940 (The News and

Courier 1938c:II-9). They also encouraged landowners to begin taking their own items of value

243 off the land, including timber and buildings (The News and Courier 1938c:II-9). Livestock such as cattle, pigs and mules also had to be removed from the basin area.

Recognizing that many plantation homes and churches in the basin would be demolished with the clearing of the basin before flooding, the federal government issued a survey of the area.

The Department of the Interior sent Thomas Waterman to record the historical and architectural features and highlights of the houses. These were published in A Survey of the Early Buildings in the Region of the Proposed Santee and Pinopolis Reservoirs in South Carolina (1939). In his book, Waterman describes the homes’ architectural details, such as the carved wooden pieces and handmade bricks, some of which were imported from Europe.

The homes of the living were not the only structures to be moved out of the basin. Over

7,000 graves were determined to be in the basin; of those, about 6,000 were dug out of the ground and relocated (Figures 7.5 and 7.6). Santee Cooper contacted families regarding whether they wanted their ancestors’ remains removed. The legal department of the Authority advertised for four weeks in the local paper the location and names of the graves to be reinterred. If the families did not come forward, Santee Cooper made the decision to move or leave the graves in the basin (Cemetery Records 1986). If the families did respond, the Authority’s agents consulted with the families to determine where the families wanted the graves reinterred, and new cemeteries were established.

There were more family cemeteries than church cemeteries in the basin. A large crew of

WPA workers was steadily employed by the task of moving graves. Betty Parker remembered driving out with her parents on Sunday afternoons to see the multitude of wooden boxes used for moving the remains:

On Sunday afternoons, my family, my dad and mother, and all six of us children, would drive out to Pinopolis and we could see all

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the little boxes containing the remains of people who were being moved to other spots. The families had been contacted, and when they gave permission to move them someplace, Santee Cooper would move them. There were hundreds upon hundreds of these little small boxes, I’d say about, three feet long and maybe two feet high. I don’t know the exact dimensions. But anyway, small boxes, just hundreds of them stacked out of course where the lake is right now, at the end of Pinopolis. Anyway, that was a sight to see, all those little boxes.

The boxes used to house the remains were a memorable sight. Bill Anderson recalled his

family’s cemetery which “was right there in front of the powerhouse, and when they cleared it all

out, we had all the graves” which he counted as seventy-six. They moved the family graves from the old family graveyard to a new cemetery they established closer to Moncks Corner.

The removal of the graves was a painful event for many families. Some did not want

their ancestors’ graves removed from the basin. Said Francis Marion Kirk in his article “Long

Fear of River Ends with Santee” of the graves in the basin: “The dead care but little. It is a hurt

to the living to see the graves of loved ones uncovered” (1938:III-2). Barbara Wilson recalled

that when her grandfather’s grave was moved, all that was left were pennies. She explained that

in the past, people placed pennies on the eyes of the deceased. Wooden buttons, used to fasten

clothes in the old days, were also found. “They’d find some in those graves, those buttons, and all, made out of wood. Some of those people were dead way back in the 1700s” (Wilson).

Many of the graves were not disturbed but simply left where they lay, a concrete slab

poured over them so the remains would not float when the waters rose. Many unmarked graves

were never found or removed. One man was told by one of the former Santee Cooper workers

that many graves were left in the basin. He said there were some places from which the graves

were easy to move, “and some places they didn’t find nothin’ to move, but there was a lot of ’em

that they didn’t even attempt to move” because they were impossible to find or unearth (O’Neal).

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Hunters have since found many tombstones in the basin. The cemetery at the Rocks Church,

occupying a small island within the lake, was left intact by Santee Cooper, but vandals later

destroyed the cemetery and graves. To the horror of local residents, bones and coffin parts have

floated to the surface and onto the lakeshore over the years (Sally Thomas).

Santee Cooper marked the new cemeteries well with signs and collected the records of

grave removal and reinterrment and stored them in their archives. Many people would call or

visit Santee Cooper to find out about their ancestors’ remains. In the late 1940s the Berkeley

County Historical Society worked to publish the archives as a resource for genealogical

researchers. The book Cemetery Records: Lake Marion and Lake Moultrie (1986) contains

small descriptions about the family and church cemeteries, lists the names of the deceased, and

details where the cemeteries were relocated.

In addition to homes and graves, Santee Cooper destroyed many landmarks that interviewees held as personally significant as well as historically relevant to Berkeley County.

Many of them cited the plantations and the beautiful homes located on them, as I have already

mentioned. They mourned the loss of the historical artifacts and buildings covered up by the

lake. Belvidere, Wampee, and Somerset were among the plantation homes most cited by the

interviewees. Other landmarks included a few churches, one of which was Black Oak. The

Black Oak church’s altar and doors, and some of its pews, were moved to the Trinity church at

Pinopolis. Some of the timbers of the church were used to build Berkeley County’s first public library. Several also recalled The Rocks Church that remained for a time on a piece of high land, completely surrounded by water. The church conducted one service there after the inundation, but several cars became bogged down in the water and the mud, so that service was the last.

Later the congregation moved the church to Eutawville.

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Many people also lamented the loss of old roads (those written about in Chapter Five),

which they considered important local landmarks. In some areas entire communities were lost to

the lake. Macbeth was one such community; the lake cut it in half. Frierson, Ferguson, Black

Oak, and Cedar Hill were small communities that also lost to the lake. Finally, people

remembered that their favorite streams, creeks and swimming holes were forced underwater by

the creation of the reservoirs.

Leaving the Basin

The process of leaving the basin caused further grief to its inhabitants, since this process

also changed the landscape. Whereas houses were once evident there and were made more

obvious with the denuding of the land, soon even these vestiges of human inhabitation would be

wiped out. Before the flooding of the basin began, Santee Cooper urged people to leave their

property and relocate their homes. What happened to the houses in the basin? Most structures were torn down while others were burned. Many houses were dismantled piece-by-piece and salvaged for use at another site or home, often in outbuildings like sheds or barns.

Sally Thomas said her father and uncle tore down their two-story home on her family’s

farm and built a house in town. Some of the houses, Joseph Hammond said, “they just stuck a match to ’em and burned ’em.” A few families with homes on relatively higher land were able to roll their homes out of the basin onto the new land. Clifford Martin’s family was one such group who moved their house. After dismantling the fireplace chimneys brick by brick, they rolled the house on timbers with the aid of mules. The system they used would move the house about a hundred feet in a day, so it took several weeks to move the house a mile to its new location.

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Even the large, storied plantation homes could not escape Santee Cooper’s destruction.

Katherine Jackson recalled the old, almost half-mile avenue of trees leading up to one home that was sawed down before the house was demolished. Others remembered being onlookers at the tearing down of a few of the storied plantation homes, such as Belvidere and Ophir. Julia

Kennedy recounted the story of when Somerset was set ablaze. It was a pleasantly warm day, but she knew that her friends’ home was burning in the distance. Made of heart pine, the house crackled and popped so much that its owners, staying in Pinopolis, knew at that very moment that their beloved home was in flames. When The Rocks plantation house in Eutawville was rolled out of harm’s way, the brick chimney collapsed on the house.

A few things were salvaged from the old houses, such as a mantelpiece, wainscoting, and

doors, all distinct architectural features. Katherine Jackson remembered that the old kitchen

from her family’s plantation, dating from the early nineteenth century, was moved to her parents’

new property where it was used as a playhouse and later a workshop. Henry Davis said his

brother took the carved wooden stairway handrail out of one of the homes and placed it in his

home. These artifacts were kept and displayed as remembrances of the former basin lifestyle.

Because they were deemed historically important, two homes were carefully dismantled

and reconstructed elsewhere as a means of saving them from the lake waters. The Hanover

House, a colonial-era structure dating from 1716, was considered to be of national significance

by the Department of the Interior (Waterman 1938). It was taken down and carefully rebuilt on

the campus of Clemson University. The other house, Woodlawn, was moved to Georgetown on

the coast. Wampee was also saved since it was on high ground in Pinopolis and never inundated.

Thus, three of the historic plantation houses were not destroyed by the creation of the Santee

Cooper lakes. Other houses were moved out of harm’s way: White Hall, in the Pinopolis area,

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and The Rocks at Eutawville. It was noted with regret that the building of the old plantation

homes was excellent and that the materials and architectural features unique to the homes “could

not be duplicated now at any expense” (The News and Courier 1941e:12).

Many of the white families were able to purchase land in new places near town or in other rural areas. Clifford Martin’s family was able to purchase a parcel of land just on the other side of the dike from where their old farm was, less than a mile away. Some people also moved to Summerville, Charleston, and Pinopolis. The soil was not often as fertile in the new places, however, so some people had to give up their farming way of life. Jeannie Morris* recalled her mother’s saying that they almost starved after moving to the Whitesville section because the soil was so poor there. The people leaving the basin lands faced an uncertain future in their new surroundings, but the passage of time lessened the unease and anxiety they may have felt then.

The Removal of African American Families from the Basin

While it is clear that African American voices opposed to losing their basin lands were

suppressed by the white political elite, many facts about the resettlement of the African

American families from the basin may be gleaned from newspaper and FSA archival sources.

African American families experienced degrees of social change and social disorganization

different from the white landowners from the basin. Over three-quarters of the 901 families

(over 3,000 of about 4,000 people) living in the basin were of African American descent. Most

of them owned land, while a smaller percentage them were tenants. A demographic profile of

the area showed that most of the residents of the basin were aged: thirty percent were more than

sixty years old. The trend of the young to leave the isolated, rural areas was “accentuated in the

249 basin” as the older people remained (The News and Courier 1940c:2). Some of these elderly persons were disabled with chronic illnesses.

From documentary evidence, it appears as though the large majority of African American families sold their land outright to the Authority. Some of them lacked sufficient notice and their land was condemned, but they lacked the resources to fight the dominant system in the courts, which were themselves not impartial thanks to entrenched racial inequality in both legal and social realms. The people I spoke with simply said that Santee Cooper took their land and deposited the purchase money in the bank for their retrieval.

While 300 families moved themselves, the Authority and the Farm Security

Administration assisted 600 families in resettling (The News and Courier 1941k:12). Almost all of the families resettled in this manner were African American. It is important to note, however, that the Authority did not have funds to help the families, since all Authority funds were provided solely for the construction of Santee Cooper. The Director of the Health and Sanitation

Division at that time, Dr. E. M. Rice, inspected twenty-two areas proposed for the resettlement of families in the basin. He judged whether they were adequately “healthy” and free of the potential to attract malarial mosquitoes (Rice 1940c:1).

The Authority purchased and optioned lands around the Santee Cooper basin to divide up and sell to the resettled families. The Authority deposited the money from their basin land purchases into an escrow account to pay for the new farming lands selected by the Authority and the FSA. The FSA helped people rebuild their homes and provided some evacuated families with grants, chickens, and seed loans. They also attempted to move people in groups according to their church, school, lodge and family affiliations (The State 1941:II-16). Conflicting accounts stated, however, that many families, over eighty percent of them of African American

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descent, could only afford a small strip of land but no house, and that people had to take their

housing materials from the basin themselves. Other resettlements, according to F. K. Simons,

the FSA supervisor for Berkeley County, were arranged as only temporary, in portable shelters.

These “evacuees” had to use their own wages as day laborers to pay for enough land needed to

establish small, viable farms (Want 1941c:10).

The first person resettled by the Authority was sixty-nine-year-old African American

Lucinda Waring. The press trumpeted her new situation as better since she had moved from a

decrepit seventy-five-year old shanty near Pineville to a new twenty-acre farm near St. Stephen.

Local rehousing officials in the area complained, however, that the land for resettled persons was

not as good; they predicted many residents would have to be added to public relief rolls. It was also feared that some would be taken farther away from seasonal job opportunities, like employment at local sawmills (Want 1940:1). Another example of a successful move, according to the local press, is told in the FSA story of Anderson Warren of the Barrow Hill community.

He received $1,409 for his old basin lands and paid $1,313 for his new seventy-seven-acre tract near Station Forty-One of the Atlantic Coast Line railroad. He planned to sell some of his new

holdings to his family and former neighbors, some of the sixty-six families who would relocate there. The Bethlehem Church was also moved away from the basin to this area and a new school

was built (Want 1941c:10).

Despite these overwhelmingly positive published accounts of the removal of families

from the basin, the interviewees recalled a harsher experience. The goals and good intentions of

the Santee Cooper and FSA resettlement efforts had little, if any, beneficial effect on the tragedy

of those who had to leave their land, according to the people I interviewed. They did not recall

251 the government helping their family move. Leonard Taylor poignantly explained what happened to his family as they moved their belongings:

There wasn’t nothing said. You just had to move. The water was coming, and you had to go. We had to take down the house. Take it down board by board. There were a lot of houses they left. But we took our house down.

At the time when Stephen Norris’s family moved away from Cedar Hill, only three families were; many people had already moved out or had died. His father ran a community store there in an area that is now under water. In the other mostly African American community of Frierson,

Alice Richardson recalled her father’s taking the house down and moving it in 1941 to a place called Forty-One, which is located at the forty-one mile marker station of the Atlantic Coast Line from Charleston.

Many of the families of the basin struggled to manage the logistics of leaving their farms, which were their sources of livelihood and self-sufficiency. The people I spoke to made no mention of the assistance and housing aid that the Farm Security Administration and Santee

Cooper were supposed to have provided for them. While the African Americans families moved their livestock out of the basin before it flooded, the crops they had planted for late harvest were in jeopardy from the mounting water level. Remarkably, his family attempted to reap the crops even after the reservoir flooded them. Leonard Taylor said:

We were farming, and we had to go and pick the corn and put the corn in the boat. We had to bring the corn in the boat. The water was taking this part of the area before we could get it out. We had to move. We had to harvest it.

He explained that he went to retrieve his corn crop after the waters of the reservoir had already reached a depth of three to four feet. Poling his boat with a paddle in the shallow waters, he competed with the fish to retrieve the corn from the lake:

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The carp would be right there, right along with you, eating the corn. But we got the fish and the corn. But you had to get [the corn] out, because, if you didn’t get it, the fish would get it, and the carp eat a lot of corn. They like corn. They smelled that corn.

This story illustrates the landscape’s change from a place belonging to its inhabitants to an

impersonal space upon which they were trespassing. Other crops, in the form of valuable fruit

and nut trees, were also decimated by the flood. These examples demonstrate that the life-giving

properties of the land in the form of food crops were destroyed by the very waters supposed to spur economic development in the form of hydroelectric power.

For at least some other families, being moved out of the basin was positive. Stephen

Norris recalled meeting one man who was relieved to part with his basin home:

I talked to one man. He lived on this plantation, and he said when that water came through that was the best thing that ever happened (laughed) because they had to move, and they were tired of living on that certain place. He was tired of being almost controlled, you see. Because he was living on this plantation, and they never could finish paying the owner off, and they couldn’t go to school, couldn’t go to town and see what other people were doing, and that man there, he was happy. He had been heavily indebted to the plantation landowner as a tenant farmer and was tired of being controlled by it. He also felt isolated in the basin because it was so far to go to school and to town. His family was moved onto new land. And when the water turned loose, he said, ‘Thank the Lord!’ (Laughed).

To where did these African American families relocate? People leaving their farms tried

to find arable land nearby. In the words of one man, such inhabitants had to move “wherever

there was vacant land” (Norris) outside the reach of the Santee Cooper lakes. The Farm Security

Administration relocated many African American families to the Whitesville section of town,

and further down 17-A in the Oakley and Perry Hill communities between Moncks Corner and

Summerville. One 2,100-acre tract was established as a farm community near Holly Hill (The

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State 1941:II-16), while another 3,855 acres in Richland County near Eastover (Columbia area)

were purchased for relocating forty families (The News and Courier 1941c:10).

The government, through its FSA program, ostensibly made attempts to help African

Americans purchase new land for farming. In doing so they tried to keep communities intact and

to provide families with new homes properly screened to prevent mosquitoes from entering.

Those who did have the money to purchase new land settled in communities near Pineville,

Cross, and Eadytown. Since their new land was often so poor, some people decided to leave the

area. Some moved even farther away, as African Americans were more likely to go to

Summerville, St. Stephens, or Charleston and to travel up North to look for jobs. Benjamin

Vaughn explained why people left Berkeley County for good:

When [African Americans] could afford it, they would travel north for better living. Here it was only farming. See, once the WPA, Santee Cooper was completed, then there was no work for all those people but to go back to the fields. So they had to travel north to get work. I remember that. Because there was no work around here.

The situation of the basin tenant farmers was different. Since tenants living in the Santee

basin did not have ownership of their land, they did not receive any money from the Authority.

Thus many had little choice but to find a nearby living and farming situation with relatives. This

pattern of moving to a place where “relatives offer them a piece of land on which to build” is

noted by Patricia Jones-Jackson as occurring among African Americans in coastal South

Carolina who are displaced by development (1987:147). One benefit of this practice is that it

maintains a cohesive family structure (Jones-Jackson 1987). Many others left Berkeley County,

however, to find wage labor; thus a substantial number of people migrated to local cities and to

Northern states. The exodus of African Americans was once again spurred by broad social and

economic changes in the region.

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The pictures of Santee Cooper and the Farm Security Administration (FSA) tell some of

the story of the rural people in poignant and wrenching detail (Figures 7.1 through 7.6). In this

era, social conscience drove photography to promote social reform; the works of Dorothea Lange are one example (G. Day 1977). The FSA sent photographer Jack Delano to the Santee basin to create a pictorial record of families evacuating the area. The pictures demonstrate “quiet groups

of people, bravely accepting with dignity and courage” the plight of leaving their homes and land

(quote of Jack Delano in Day 1977:125). During a 1977 photography exhibit of these same FSA

photos, an anonymous African American woman reflected on Santee Cooper’s condemnation of

her father’s land. Here is an excerpt from her transcript:

I knew Daddy’s land was condemned because I came home from school that afternoon and got off the school bus and ran in just screaming, “What in the world!” Because they had come in and started cutting the big old tree in the front. We had a lot of big pine trees and they were all down! It was terrible because Daddy didn’t really have money to go on to rebuild. He wouldn’t accept what they gave him. It was just a little token. It took a long time for the settlement and then it wasn’t what it should have been [. . . ] (quoted in G. Day 1977:127).

These expressed recollections and reflections, in addition to the photos, help explain the loss and

bewilderment experienced by the African Americans who had to leave their homes in the basin

for an uncertain future.

The destruction of the landscape mirrored the social disorganization of African American

communities in the basin. The small-scale farming livelihood and the close community

connections involving family, church, and schools were altered as Santee Cooper dispersed the

African American population into the surrounding region of the state with an exacerbated sense

of collective disorder. Over time, the shared turmoil of uprootedness gave way to new social

order, even though issues of race continue to influence economic differentiation. Today, one

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characteristic of the so-called New South is that most African Americans live in urban areas

rather than rural ones (Baer and Jones 1992), a result of the displacement of many families in

addition to migration for work. The displaced ties of the African Americans to their basin lands

account for an identity shift in which potential social disorganization was eventually countered

with strong commitments to family and church (Baer and Jones 1992, K. Day 1982).

The Impact of Clearing and Flooding the Basin

How did the local people perceive the impact of the cleared land before it was covered

with water? Whereas first people termed the area as “nothing but trees,” after Santee Cooper

started clearing, they said the area was “nothing but just stumps.” These statements enable one

to recognize the enormous scale of land clearing. In the Pinopolis basin, not a tree was left

standing because the WPA cut them all down. Several interviewees explained that for a distance

of many miles, as far as one could see, there was nothing but bare land and stumps. Michael

King vividly recalled having seen denuded acres of land where trees were “just slaughtered.”

Mary Nelson thought the area looked “like a bomb had hit it. Just devastated.” Others felt the

area looked “desolate” and as if “the countryside had been torn up” (Griffin), or as if a hurricane

or tornado had hit it (Wilson). The destruction of the trees affected several of the interviewees

emotionally. Barbara Wilson said that “I just felt lost, I guess is the only word I can think of, when I saw it. I just felt a sense of loss.” She also remembered her mother telling her that the trees would never grow back.

In his 1939 account of the landscape transformation in the basin, a journalist noted that

people would not recognize the land after it was cleared since most of the familiar landmarks had

been erased from sight: “In some instances the woods have disappeared entirely, in others much

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growth has been left or dumped nearby for burning. Large borrow pits have been cut.” (Want

1939b:14). The landscape, denuded of its forests, began to take on a new meaning for the

residents who remembered the way it was. Soon, it would all be under water.

The inundation of the shallow, now-denuded basin was an event that residents recalled

vividly. The Santee waters would cover an estimated 160,000 acres of land. Just before the area

was flooded, dams held the water back at various river channels. A small stream ran from the

Wilson Dam to the power house prior to the large-scale inundation, but after they closed the

locks at the Pinopolis Dam, the Santee River flowed into the basin. Several described the

flooding of the basin in particular ways, saying that Santee Cooper “turned loose” or “turned on”

the water to allow it to fill the basin.

The flooding of the reservoirs began on November 5, 1941. The system that allowed for

the inundation began at the closure of the spillway gates at the Santee Dam, also called Wilson’s

Landing. Steel “stoplogs” fifty feet in length were placed in the open gates to stem the flow (The

News and Courier 1941i:1). Starting November 12, 1941, waters channeled through the Santee

reservoir raced into the Pinopolis reservoir by way of the diversion canal that connected the two

lakes. With an estimated rate of 324 million gallons pouring in the Pinopolis reservoir daily (The

News and Courier 1941j:1), waters rose over a foot per day (Want 1941b:1). The deeper

Pinopolis lake was filled in time to test the power generation of the hydro plant’s turbines on

December 17, 1941.

As the flooding of the basin was set to begin, Betty Parker recalled that many people felt apprehensive about the project:

When they were going to flood, let the water into the basin, it was viewed sort of with trepidation. I think that a lot of people looked on that as we shouldn’t be messing with something like that.

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Her statement is worth noting as one of the only viewpoints that considered whether humans

should attempt to conquer nature. She did not formulate this question solely through her own

thoughts, however; it grew out of the uneasiness felt around her at the time.

Some people were incredulous that the whole basin could be covered with water. Many

families would drive to observe the water filling the basin, “and sure enough, we saw it start to trickle in” (Parker). Joseph Hammond indicated his recognition of the scale of the gradual

flooding of the land:

It was all over this place here. See, this is kind of flat country. And if the water rose that much (indicating a couple of inches), it might spread for two or three miles. I don’t think it took but several months to fill up. It looked just like a river, coming through the diversion canal. It just came on down there.

People were impressed with the impact the rising waters had on the landscape as they witnessed

the formerly forested land become a huge reservoir before their eyes. Raymond Clark said he

remembered walking on one of the broken temporary dams to see “a tremendous volume of

water just rushin’ [. . .] into the lake basin” which was “a frightening thing for a little fellow” to

see and hear.

The water came through the diversion canal like a river. Debris, logs, and boards surged

over the land as the water filled the basin. Santee Cooper stationed cranes to pick up the logs

that came up to the dam and pull them out of the water. Several men, looking to earn a few

dollars, captured the floating timbers and took them to the sawmill. This practice continued after

the lake was built (Randolph).

One unforeseen effect of the flooding of the basin was its impact on wildlife like rabbits

and squirrels but most particularly on snakes. The rising water carried the snakes right up to the

dam. They sought floating logs and stumps for protection, but thousands of them drowned.

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David Randolph said the dead snakes “washed up against the rocks, like earthworms” because

although snakes can swim, “they can’t survive in that kind of flood.” The paved part of the dike

was covered with poisonous snakes and alligators trying to escape the mounting waters. They

were everywhere, swimming and crawling out of the water and onto the dam and the rip-rap.

Bill Anderson went to the dike after school for almost a month with his friends to kill snakes. He

said, “Everybody killed as many snakes as he could, but still, that thing was so lined” with

snakes that it was all you saw for weeks. Joseph Hammond recalled sitting on a stump in the

basin, catching seventy-six rattlesnakes one afternoon and evening. He put them in a sack and

took them to the Santee Cooper lab where he worked and dumped them in a glass tank from

which he didn’t think they would get out. “The next morning,” he said, “the secretary came in

there, she went in the office, and she screamed out − snakes were hanging in there.” He laughed

and slapped his knee as he shared this story.

Other wildlife trying to escape the rising waters of the unleashed Santee River included

deer, rabbits, and skunks. Joseph Hammond said that for the most part, wildlife in the basin

escaped and moved to drier parts of the region. Many of the deer were able to swim out, although some of them died. He also recalled a lot of skunks in the basin, but that many of them drowned. Several of the participants remembered that animals like deer, ducks, and quail were

forced to higher ground and became easy targets for hunters soon after the lake was flooded.

Some hunters took advantage of the trapped deer on the newly created island on which The

Rocks church stood, and “just slaughtered ’em” (Randolph). Bird populations were also

immediately affected, since the migratory birds did not have the same places to go, and the

larger, excessive flow of the Cooper River fed by the dam eradicated the duck population down

the river. Many crops on dry land were threatened by the wildlife trying to find a way out of the

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basin away from the flooding. A few interviewees noted that a few wild hogs, along with deer,

raccoon and bobcats, attempted to devour some local crops.

One harbinger of things to come was the great increase in fish brought by the flooding.

Dale Green recalled when “they first started to turn loose water,” he would paddle out in his

boat, stick the paddle out into the water a certain way, and the fish would “jump right into the

boat.” That was the beginning of the excellent bass fishing in the Santee Cooper lakes. The

landscape soon became one not of wholesale wildlife destruction, but one of wildlife attraction

and recreational pursuits.

Reflections on Loss and Progress

A sense of loss, disorder, nostalgia, and protest: these are some of the main feelings

about progress in general and Santee Cooper in particular. Donald Worster briefly discusses the

trend of opposition to hydraulic enterprise, a trend he claims had begun to grow by the middle of

the twentieth century. This protest was based on the “remembrance of things past” (1985:324).

This nostalgia for nature, he argues, became a potentially subversive force leading to

environmental advocacy against new hydroelectric projects. The debate over Santee Cooper, both before and after the fact, was infused with wistful longing for the natural landscape and the former basin lifestyle.

Most interviewees recognized the resentment and protest of the people who lost their land

to the Santee Cooper development. They recalled that the only people against the project were

those who owned homes and property in the basin; interviewees knew the property-owning

families in the basin were devastated to lose their land. Frances Bailey said that the only ones

who fought the project were the ones who had to sell their places and move “because they loved

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where they were.” She noted that these people were raised in the place where their families had

lived for generations. Another man recalled that many of the older African Americans living in

the basin didn’t want to leave because they didn’t want to be uprooted from their established

homes. They wanted to hold onto their land.

Many of the landowning families expressed their grief, anger, and feelings of injustice

over the devastating loss. Property owners in the basin were upset because the project took away

farmland and homes and destroyed it. For them, the coming of Santee Cooper as they

remembered it was a negative event, viewed with resentment, bitterness, and disgust. One

descendant of a landowning family said that people had been beaten down so much by the

Depression that they didn’t have the “soul or the stamina to fight” Santee Cooper or the federal

and state governments that supported it (Jackson). Michael King stressed the importance of understanding that the 1930s were a time “when people basically didn’t question the government.”

While many lost their land and were forced to move, they still benefited, according to a

few interviewees. Daniel Evans said that many of the plantation families profited from Santee

Cooper because they received large sums of money for their land and some of their existing land

became what is now valuable waterfront property. Donald Lewis said that Santee Cooper’s

purchase of his family’s 10,000 acres had made him financially independent and well-off, though

he would much rather still have his family’s land.

The subset of interviewees whose families had owned land in the basin expressed the

strongest opinions about Santee Cooper’s destruction and the condemnation of their homes and

land. According to rumor, at least one member of this group took his own life a long time ago,

but I could not verify this claim. Emotions over losing one’s family land were tremendous and

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life-changing for many of the former basin dwellers. These strong views are best conveyed in the participants’ own words. Isabelle Carter described the importance of land to most basin

residents and the indignation her family felt at losing their property to Santee Cooper:

My people were not too pleased because they took their land, and land is their god almost, they love land, and up until the older ones died, they still did. You didn’t bother this land, you know, nobody sold it, you didn’t do anything to it. It was here, and they farmed it. . . . It was sorta like you were being invaded, if you can understand what I mean, and here we were just sittin’ nice and quiet and everything, you know, and then this thing just comes through and it’s big, you know? [Santee Cooper] had its battle set with people losing their land that they loved so dearly and that meant so much to ‘em.

Metaphor, describing one thing in terms of another, is a useful cognitive tool humans use to

comprehend events (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). In this part of her interview, Carter employed several metaphors to express her bereavement upon the destruction of her home. First, she described the importance of land by equating it with religion; next, she referred to being invaded by a government project in the name of progress. These metaphors are significant because she invokes connotations of the all-powerful (God) and the feelings of not having control and of being attacked.

It is important to note that, compared with the generation that was young when Santee

Cooper was built, the previous generation felt the most grief over the loss of their land. In his

interview, Donald Lewis expressed this greater bereavement and demonstrated his internalization

of the importance his ancestors placed on the family land, the loss of which grieved him also.

His family was a major landowner in the basin, holding 10,000 acres in parts of several

plantations. His father and his father’s generation, he said, never recovered from the loss of their

land. In the interview, he explained their and his regrets over the loss of the family land:

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[Living on the plantation is] one of the things I’ll never be able to experience. It’s part of history I can never relive. I’ll go to my grave regretting I was never able to be part of that basin. It’ll haunt me forever. Even though I never saw it, I’ll never get over it. I know my father, he sat on the porch and watched the water coming in over his land. I don’t know how he took it. It means something different today than it did at that time. It was, “We are the land. The land is us.” Settled here 1685 and we farmed it. That was our heritage for 300 years.

He later asked, “How do you replace it?” Other basin families, he said, never recovered from the

development, since their land could never be restored to them. “That was part of their life. For

300 years. You can’t replace that” (Lewis). Other interviewees who felt similarly bereft echoed this sentiment. Jeannie Morris* recalled how her father felt about losing his property; the loss

was especially difficult since, as she knew, her parents’ roots were in the basin: “I’m sure that

was a hard drive away from there that day. I can’t even imagine. I really can’t. For so many

people.”

Basin inhabitants were also angry over losing their land. In an interview at the 1977 FSA

photo exhibit, an anonymous woman expressed such resentment this way:

If you lived through [Santee Cooper], you could never forget. I was filled with rebellion and disgust, and I could see my parents suffer and I was too young to do anything. My daddy hated it and never had anything good to say about it . . . . And many an old person is in their grave today because of it. My husband’s uncle died worrying over it. He didn’t live six months after they condemned that property. That’s right! I mean, it’s sad, a few people get to power, how in the heck I don’t know, and really you have no say so. Your politicians are the ones who do it all. I can’t understand how they get away with it (quoted in G. Day 1977:127).

The pain many of the participants felt over losing their family land in the basin has still not left

them. Some, particularly those descended from the original Santee Huguenot families, felt

strongly that they were robbed of their birthrights. Katherine Jackson remarked that many

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people from the large landholding families still feel a great deal of anger toward Santee Cooper:

“Most of them are, and I am, quite resentful. Even the ones who have gotten beyond [the

resentment] had that air of resignation, and it still was a major factor in their lives.” She

possesses the original building contract for the home on her family’s plantation, where, she

believes, she would be living today if only she had been afforded the opportunity. An intact home would have provided herself and her family with “a much greater sense of connection.”

She lamented that any research she does with regard to the old plantation house is tinged with a

“sense of loss and feeling of anger, and I doubt that that ever changes” (Jackson).

The interviewees admitted that land meant something more several generations ago than

it does today, when, some claimed, there is less attachment to the land. Michael King admitted

that the people of his generation are “the last ones that will have any feeling for” the land that

was lost under the waters of the Santee Cooper lakes. Other interviewees who felt bereaved on

behalf of their ancestors echoed this sentiment. Their loss left them struggling to make sense of

their fates during a period of rapid social change. Whether poor or privileged, most who had to

move out of the basin resented Santee Cooper for it in some way.

A few interviewees viewed the project philosophically, acknowledging the tension that often exists between progress and destruction of a way of life. They evaluated what they gave up to Santee Cooper in contrast to what they obtained from it. Michael King considered that although his family lost their land, “I don’t think I could deny that my life is much better growing up with Santee Cooper [. . .] than without it, and they brought prosperity to Moncks

Corner.” He added that his emotions are mixed: “For my ancestors, I feel great pain, but for myself it was a pleasure.” His statement exemplifies the some of the conflicted and ambivalent views and values of the embattled landscape.

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Other interviewees whose families did not live in the basin acknowledged the hurt that

Santee Cooper caused those who did. They recognized that economic growth altered the land

irrevocably. Mary Ann Powell* said, “Bringing in a source of water to generate that [electric

power] probably destroyed a way of life.” David Randolph remembered writing a college paper

about Santee Cooper at the time of its construction, weighing the benefits of the Santee Cooper

development with the loss of the beautiful basin land and its historic homes. Neatly

summarizing the supporting and opposing arguments of Santee Cooper, he commented, “The

people who wanted a job were tickled to death. The people who thought they were going to lose

their property were mad” (Randolph). He recognized at the time that “you cannot impede

progress, so to speak. It’s coming […] but lots of people tried to impede the progress and they

were defending themselves in doing so.”

Several interviewees reflected on the nature of progress, loss, and change. Emma Lee felt sorry for the families who lost their land but said that a human struggle between change and tradition occurs in every phase of life. “That’s what happens when somebody’s moving forward, somebody’s against it” (Lee). “Thank God it survived,” she continued, because, “if you’re gonna grow, you gonna have to give up land and everything else” (Lee). Joseph Hammond equivocated in his response: “It helped a lot of people and it hurt a lot of people.” Several people argued that human nature is resistant to change in general. Said Glenn Edwards, “People don’t like change – they don’t understand it.”

For those basin residents who lost their family lands, the damming of the Santee basin for

hydroelectricity amounted to the damning of the landscape of which they were dispossessed.

Santee Cooper cut their historic and ancestral land ties. Although many of these residents saw

the long-term benefits of the project, it forever altered their environment and attachment to place.

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They sacrificed to profit others. The loss of their homes, land, and sites of embedded memories still remained painful for many with a strong connection to the land.

The cultural model of landscape loss includes a many personal experiences of those who had to leave their family land in order to vacate the basin. People negotiate this change in the landscape through the politics of memory. The overarching upper-level schema was the sense of loss that came with leaving their land. Attached to this was the notion that their identity, as farmers who had lived off the land for centuries, was left behind in the basin.

While the parents of the generation I interviewed would have held separate models of

Santee Cooper’s landscape changes, the people growing up during the twentieth century were affected in two separate ways. Among those deprived of their homes and land in the basin by

Santee Cooper, a few still retain a deep and abiding resentment toward the project. Those whose families did not have to sell their land to Santee Cooper, however, accepted the landscape changes, social changes, and the schema of progress as part of the natural course of events.

The lower level schemas in this chapter include the moving of one’s family out of the basin, the flooding of the land, and the resettlement onto new lands. The theme of destruction, of taking, runs through all of these and maintains an uneasy relationship with progress. The interviewees recognized that progress was the main reason for the taking of inhabitants’ lands and destroying them. Additionally, they acknowledged that a way of life was destroyed, that of the farmer making a living in the Santee basin. Those who lost their lands felt uprooted by

Santee Cooper, but larger transformations than this were begun with the United States’ imminent involvement in World War II. In the post-war economy that ensued, people began to seek wage employment, and land was no longer the only “means of livelihood” (K. Day 1982:16). Instead,

266 the area’s identity shifted to what is considered today the New South, characterized by greater modernization and urbanization, fewer farmers, and a lack of Jim Crow segregation.

The forms of landscape cognition – scale, features, and meaning – are useful for framing a discussion of the condemnation and clearing of the landscape. First, Santee Cooper’s clearing of landscape drastically altered its scale: people saw thousands of acres denuded before their eyes and began to comprehend the immense loss. The clearing even altered the horizon. As significant features of the former basin landscape like homes and trees were uprooted, the people who remembered the area as forest and swamp became disoriented. Other features of the landscape changes included the massive disturbance of wildlife in the basin who sought to escape the rising waters of the impounded lakes.

Seemingly overnight, Santee Cooper transformed the meaning of the landscape from natural and historical beauty and human settlement to complete clearing and then construction for economic progress. It is important to note that some people never read the meaning of progress into the landscape but instead only saw one of destruction and condemnation, because the landscape held special and emotional meaning to them as the place they lived with their families, communities, and memories. As their homes were condemned to demolition, they, too, felt condemned and anxious. Only a few of the persons hurt by the condemnation of their land balanced this heavy emotional loss with their view of perceived, long-term benefits.

Summary

Since numerous Berkeley County residents were required to move for the inundation of the basin, many struggled in the process of selling their land or having it condemned. With few means of resisting the force of eminent domain and having received low prices, as they perceived

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them, for their family land, basin inhabitants were hard pressed to find new places to live and to create viable farms. Other major landmarks of the basin, including the houses, graves, churches, and communities, would be demolished, removed, or wiped out by the flood. The process by which the families finally left the basin was filled with emotional distress and resentment.

African American families, the majority of the basin’s inhabitants, had a peculiar experience in that they were purportedly assisted by the FSA and Santee Cooper in establishing new homesteads. They experienced similar regret and resignation, however, at being forced to leave their family lands and crops, which provided their sustenance.

The clearing of the land and the flooding of the basin were momentous events in the lives

of the people who recall Santee Cooper. The rising water impressed many of the residents with

its immediate displacement of wildlife and obliteration of their favorite landmarks. The painful

memories of several former basin landowners reveal the continued bitterness of some of the

interviewees who felt, and still feel, an interminable sense of loss and injustice. Other

interviewees who did not lose their lands considered the debate of progress versus the destruction

of homes in creating a new meaning of the cultural landscape.

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CHAPTER 8

A REPURPOSED LANDSCAPE: THE LONG-TERM IMPACTS OF SANTEE-COOPER

The transformation of the Santee Cooper landscape subsumed thousands of acres of

natural swamp and agricultural lands under two large reservoirs. The project directors initially

meant these anthropogenic lakes to generate electricity by flowing steadily through the turbines in the Pinopolis power house. Later, inhabitants found diverse uses for and economic growth opportunities within this newly-altered physical environment. The Santee basin landscape was

transformed from a remote agricultural region to one of construction and hydroelectric

production. Years later, the basin became a landscape of prime recreational territory.

In this chapter, I first discuss the environmental consequences of the hydroelectric

development. The diversion of the Santee River into the new channels did not come without

serious ecological and economic costs for the region’s hydrology, especially near the coast. The

changes to the Santee and Cooper rivers devastated the diverse ecological communities in

freshwater and saltwater wetlands downstream. The interviewees compared the environmental

catastrophe and loss of electricity wrought by Hurricane Hugo to the effects Santee Cooper had

on the basin.

The interviewees view the lake’s recreational opportunities as greatly beneficial to

themselves and to the community. Finally, the residents attribute part of Berkeley County’s economic growth to Santee Cooper’s transformation of the basin. The residents consider Santee

Cooper as having placed their town “on the map” (Davis, others). While attributing Berkeley

County’s relative success to Santee Cooper, they also recognize a newly-shifting meaning of progress that they fear will further change their landscape and community for the worse.

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Environmental Effects of Santee Cooper

The overall environmental impact of Santee Cooper is commensurate with other large dams that control the flow of powerful rivers. Altering such a large “organic machine,” to use a phrase from historian White (1995), leads to consequences that are often beyond human control and exact significant costs from wildlife and ecosystems. The unique nature of the Santee and its location in a coastal plain affected the hydrology, vegetation, and fauna as the newly-formed lakes altered riparian, aquatic, and marine ecosystems. The Santee Cooper project disturbed both ecological processes and communities in a number of ways. It is interesting to note that only a few interviewees discussed the environmental impacts of Santee Cooper, and these schemas of nature were almost solely recognized within the domain of wildlife. The most widespread and significant impacts, though, have been the downstream of Santee Cooper, up to thirty miles away from Moncks Corner.

The immediate impact of the flooding was the loss of 160,000 acres of land. Much of

this area comprised freshwater wetlands fed by streams and the Santee River. The inundated

areas of the basin lost much of its vegetation, described in Chapter Two, in the form of water- submerged plants and trees that provided food for birds and wildlife. This area had served as productive breeding grounds and established habitat for wildlife. The unique limestone springs that supported many species of plants, some of them rare, were decimated. Another such loss was that of the indigenous pond cypress, whose habitat was destroyed (Porcher 2004). The abandoned rice and agricultural fields have since undergone an ecological succession: an accumulation of water-submerged and floating plants have created a climax community known as a swamp forest (Porcher and Rayner 2001).

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To offset the loss of the migratory habitat of and breeding grounds for wildlife, the

Department of the Interior established in 1941 the nearby Santee National Wildlife Refuge in

Clarendon County, on the banks of Lake Marion. The 15,095-acre refuge is two-thirds wetlands

and open water; the remainder is woodlands and lands formerly under cultivation. Thousands of

acres of former rice fields (known as secondary swamps) not flooded by Santee Cooper are

currently employed in the management of waterfowl (Porcher and Rayner 2001), some of which

include ducks, geese, and swans, who winter at the refuge. The refuge also serves as a stopover

and nesting place for some neo-tropical migratory birds, shore birds, and wading birds. A few

threatened species are protected within the bounds of the refuge, including the red-cockaded

woodpecker, the bald eagle, and the American alligator (Fish and Wildlife Service 2006).

The flooding of the basin destroyed over a hundred thousand acres of cropland and

forests, both primary and secondary, since millions of feet of timber were logged and cleared out

of the basin for sawmill processing. Kauffman estimated that 19,000 acres of virgin hardwood

and cypress were lost to the creation of the reservoirs (1939), while an estimated 100,000 acres

of land suitable for timber production were inundated by the reservoirs (Kauffman 1939). In

addition, tens of thousands of acres of viable farmland in the basin were flooded, farmland used

not only for cotton but also for food crops such as corn, peas, beans, potatoes, and other garden

produce. The lands used as pasture and grazing grounds for cattle, pigs, and other domesticated

animals were flooded with the creation of the lakes.

The diversion of the Santee River damaged the delta where the river met the Atlantic

Ocean. The Santee watershed, with an area of almost 17,000 square miles, was the second largest watershed on the Eastern seaboard and drained about forty percent of the state before construction (Kovacik and Winberry 1989: 27). The Santee Cooper project diverted almost

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ninety percent of the normal flow of the Santee River, which traveled to the Atlantic through two

main distributaries, the North and South Santee Rivers (Hockensmith 2004). The disruption of

the standard river flow created detrimental consequences along course of the river to its estuarine

delta.

This special estuarine ecosystem included stages and gradients from tidal freshwater

marsh to tidal salt marshes near the coast as described in Chapter Two. Since plant survival is so

closely linked to water and nutrient conditions, hydrologic changes immediately alter the

composition of vegetation in unique wetland ecosystems (Porcher and Rayner 2001). Flood

plains and marshes must have sufficient flows and inundation of water to provide habitat for and

diversity of species. For vegetation to flourish, these flows must occur at appropriate times, such

as with tides or natural freshwater flows. For example, large volumes of water at inopportune

times can carry away seedlings and otherwise prevent their survival, reducing biodiversity in

critical freshwater wetlands (Peterson and Baldwin 2004).

Since the hydroelectric development and diversion of the river, its delta has become severely eroded, retreating almost 900 feet (Kovacik and Winberry 1989: 23). The flow of the

Santee at the site of the Delta was 18,500 cubic feet per second (with over 300,000 cubic feet per

second during spring floods), but this rate was reduced to a minimum of 500 cubic feet per

second when the dam was placed on the upper lake. However, the annual mean discharge

downstream flow for the post-hydroelectric project Santee River was 2,900 cubic feet per second

(Hockensmith 2004). Researchers found the intrusion of saltwater at least 5.2 miles upstream for

the South Santee (owing to its lesser stream flow), and 3.6 miles for the North Santee

(Hockensmith 2004). Salinity levels varied widely through periods of high and low streamflow from the North and South Santee Rivers (Hockensmith 2000).

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The resulting lack of fresh water into the Santee Delta contributed to severe cases of salinization that altered habitat. Saltwater incursion into both freshwater and brackish marshes

can radically reduce species diversity because it changes the trophic structure of the wetlands.

The higher salinity of the marshlands reduces plant species diversity and kills the vegetation that

wildlife, such as ducks and other wildfowl, needs for food. Thus, higher salinity levels can

reduce biological diversity of both floral and faunal species.

Recently, scientists have sought to quantify the effects of the Santee Cooper project on

the Delta. The map of the interpolated 1942 data from Chapter 2 (Figure 2.5) shows the pre-

Santee Cooper major vegetation classes of the Santee Delta (Nixon 2004). To recapitulate, the

region had distinct salinity toleration classes of vegetation ranging from oligohaline (more

freshwater) communities to mesohaline and polyhaline (more saltwater) communities. By 1999, however, almost the entire Santee Delta area consisted of salinity tolerant vegetation in the polyhaline range, with significantly less vegetation cover in the oligohaline and mesohaline ranges (Figure 8.1). The two maps were combined into one (Figure 8.2) exhibiting the change in vegetation salinity classes over time. In this map, it is clear that most of the vegetation in the area has become saline-adapted. Overall, the results of the Santee River Delta study reveal a shift from mostly freshwater-adapted communities to saltwater-adapted communities.

The combination of lack of freshwater and alluvial sediment with saltwater incursion also destroyed the cultivation of food crops along the lower reaches of the Santee River. State poet

Archibald Rutledge lambasted Santee Cooper for years, writing scores of letters describing the

harm to his riverside plantation of Hampton near McClellanville (Rutledge 1942-1952). He later

settled with Santee Cooper for damages to his croplands.

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The downstream effects of Santee Cooper also extended into the Atlantic. The loss of

the Santee River’s natural flow prevented the accumulation of sand and sediment in the Santee

Delta. This sedimentation had naturally replenished the erosion of the state’s barrier islands

caused by ocean currents (Porcher 2004). “Whenever you do a project of this scale,” said

Porcher, “people don’t consider the repercussions.”

Not only was the Santee River and its delta affected, but the diversion of the Santee’s

waters down the Tailrace Canal also sent an unnaturally large flow of water through the Cooper

River, which was originally small. The increased flow and sediment along this course caused tremendous siltation in the estuarine marshes and in the Charleston Harbor, where the Cooper

River met the Atlantic Ocean. Here, the Army Corps of Engineers had to dredge continually for many years to keep the harbor open to cargo ships. The silt had to be dredged and pumped out into the nearby marshes, creating dredge spoils that destroyed thousands of acres of salt marsh.

The spoils cracked as they dried, and the resulting fissures attracted mosquitoes (Porcher 2004).

The heavier water flows and siltation also had immediate and long-lasting effects on the

delicate vegetation of the Cooper River estuary because the light levels and temperature

fluctuations associated with increased sedimentation of rivers can block germination of aquatic

species (Peterson and Baldwin 2004). Abnormal water flows such as those experienced by the

Cooper River can inhibit seedlings from becoming rooted (Peterson and Baldwin 2004).

To mitigate some of the adverse effects of the Santee River’s diversion into the channel

of the smaller Cooper River, the Army Corps of Engineers undertook the task of re-diverting the

waters into the original Santee channel. They completed the project in 1985. This canal

rediversion at St. Stephens, at which water is taken from Lake Moultrie, meets the path of the

Santee River, diverted from the waters of Lake Marion from the Santee Dam, and flows into the

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Atlantic Ocean at the original delta site, where the Cape Romain Bird Sanctuary is located. The

canal channeled most of the flow back into the Santee with the exception of a daily average of

4,500 cubic feet per second that is discharged into the Cooper River at the Pinopolis dam

(Hockensmith 2004). The rediversion project did reverse the siltation of the Charleston Harbor

and decrease salinity levels in the Santee Delta as intended; however, the current flows down the

Santee now average between 7,000 and 10,000 cubic feet per second, which is about forty

percent of the original flow (Hockensmith 2004).

Because of the large reduction in flow from the Santee River, the Santee Delta has more saline-adapted plant communities (Nixon 2004). Today, the head of the Santee Delta contains oligohaline vegetation like Typha spp., Schoenoplectus spp., Echinochloa spp., Eleocharis spp., and Zizaniopsis spp., which make for a more diverse habitat (Nixon 2004:). However, the mouth of the delta is more monotypic, dominated by polyhaline marsh grasses (Spartina alterniflora)

and Juncus roemerianus, while Spartina cynosuroidus grows in the brackish (mesohaline)

middle section of the Delta (Nixon 2004). Wetland tree and shrub species currently found in the

areas with more salinity are Baccharis hamifolia, Iva frutescens, and Borrichia spp, while

varying amounts of freshwater provide growth for Taxodium distichium, Nyssa spp., and Pinus

taeda (Nixon 2004:1-2) .

Santee Cooper’s environmental effects have extended to fish populations. Anadromous

fishes generally inhabit salt water bodies but migrate to fresh water for spawning, so they need

enough water to move between freshwater and saltwater bodies to spawn. Dams also influence

the habitat and movement of fishes by manipulating turbidity, sedimentation, temperature, volume of water, and other elements of the process. Anadromous fishes have frequented the

Santee Cooper lakes since the lakes were created, because the fish were used to swimming up the

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Santee for springtime spawning. The Santee dams, however, obstructed their habitual migration

routes, so the Authority began creating “fishways,” artificial mechanisms for returning fish to the

waters in which they were spawned. The navigation lock at the Pinopolis dam and a fishlift at

St. Stephen are used to help the fish migrate. The anadromous fishes most prevalent in the

Santee Cooper system today are the American shad and the blueback herring. Other species

include shortnose shad, hickory shad, striped bass (Morone saxatilis), and American sturgeon.

At the same time Santee Cooper workers were clearing land and constructing the dams, other workers were carrying out a simultaneous government program to amass 414,000 acres of forests from which to create the Francis Marion National Forest in Berkeley and Charleston

Counties. Established in 1937 for game and timber management, recreation, and research, this

National Forest was considered compensation for the loss of virgin hardwood forests to the

Santee Cooper project (Kauffman 1939). Roads were built through the forest for logging and fire protection purposes. The types of trees in the forest are loblolly pine, longleaf pine and the bottomland hardwoods typical of the South Carolina coastal plain. Cattle were also allowed to graze in several pastures in specific zones of the forest (The News and Courier 1939a:10).

The interviewees assessed the effects of Santee Cooper on local wildlife. Some of the

participants were recreational hunters who opined that Santee Cooper displaced birds, deer, fish,

and reptiles into surrounding areas. David Randolph summarized the situation by saying the

wilderness was underwater, and “all other wildlife ceased to exist and in its place came the

fishing industry.” George Adams said that quail and dove populations disappeared from the lake

area since their habitat was destroyed. Santee Cooper established a Wildlife Sanctuary to the

west of the lake, however, that contains many ducks but which prohibits hunting.

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The people interviewed said they thought the local deer population was rapidly growing,

due in part to the local housing development of the area surrounding the lake that displaces them.

George Adams attributes the growth of the deer population to the prevalence of pine forest

underbrush, which attracts the deer. Although there were few deer tracks before Santee Cooper,

George Adams laughed and said, “Now you can go anywhere and find thousands.” Deer are

considered pests in the area just as they are in other suburban communities, eating garden crops

and running across roads. A few other interviewees surmised that the housing and other development from North Charleston drives the deer farther north to find habitation and food.

They likened the pushing of wildlife such as deer, turkey, and squirrels by the development of

greater Charleston and North Charleston to the creation of the Santee Cooper lakes. Naomi

Dillard said that she hears them every night, eating her garden crops. “We’ve seen as many as

five at night when we come down that road” to her house, she comments. Duck, quail, and deer

hunting are still popular area sports.

Several participants noted that Santee Cooper currently works together with local

residents to preserve land and wildlife. As people in Berkeley County strove to create the Lord

Berkeley Conservation Trust, Santee Cooper helped establish land for it under conservation

easements. Currently, fifteen hundred acres are under easement, set aside from development, to

protect area wildlife. Santee Cooper also sponsors a summer outdoor and environmental

education program for children.

The lakes are experiencing eutrophication, a natural process that, because of higher

nutrient loads and turbidity, encourages the growth of primary producers such as phytoplankton

(Tufford and McKellar 1999). Particularly in impounded rivers that create reservoirs, this

process changes the composition of the plants and animals living in it. The South Carolina

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Department of Health and Environmental Control issued a water quality assessment study of

South Carolina’s watersheds. The report documented degraded conditions in Lake Marion because of decreased pH levels and increasing fecal coliform bacteria levels. Lake Moultrie also experiences decreasing oxygen and pH levels (SC Department of Health and Environmental

Control 2005). Another current problem is a preponderance of aquatic macrophyte growth. For

example, the invasive aquatic plant hydrilla (Hydrilla verticillata), not found in the lakes until

the 1980s, now covers tens of thousands of acres. To curb such aquatic plant growth, Santee

Cooper introduced herbicide applications and grass carp to the lake (SC Department of Health

and Environmental Control 2005).

Today, the hydro plant turbines generate very little power because the Federal Energy

Regulatory Commission requires that the lake must be maintained at a certain level. The

turbines run only an average of ten minutes a day. To provide the majority of power, Santee

Cooper constructed many coal- and oil-fired steam plants in the region, further degrading the

environment by shipping in coal from hundreds of miles away and then burning it to generate

electric power. This coal burning pollutes the air, accounting for almost seventy percent of

sulfur dioxide (SO2) and thirty percent of nitrogen oxide emissions nationwide. In 2002, their

coal-fired plants emitted over 130,000 tons of these chemicals and particulate matter,

contributing to smog, acid rain, and human respiratory problems. The Environmental Protection

Agency settled with the South Carolina Public Service Authority in 2004 over its violations of the Clean Air Act. The settlement requires them to pay a penalty of two million dollars in addition to installing pollution controls on more than eighty-three percent of their coal-fired megawatt generating capacity to reduce emissions by 70,000 tons per year (EPA 2004). Santee

Cooper must also pay millions toward such state environmental initiatives as the South Carolina

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Land Conservation Project, an energy-efficient technologies effort, and a clean-fuels school bus

project (EPA 2004). Santee Cooper seeks to increase its power-generation capacities by

applying for more coal-fired plants to produce electricity in areas like Florence County.

In part because of the environmental damage large hydroelectric projects cause, the

United States government does not build them anymore. As environmentalism increased in the

1960s, people began to oppose dam projects like the Tellico Dam of the TVA system because it harmed wildlife and halted the flow of natural rivers. For these reasons, the Federal Energy

Regulatory Commission (FERC) decides after decades-long intervals (which used to be fifty years but are now thirty years) whether to re-license many existing dams for continued operation.

The FERC requires minimum and maximum flows to pass through dams to maintain water levels in both rivers and reservoirs so as not to upset the ecological balance. The federal relicensing program is especially concerned with the travel of anadromous fishes and water quality (Santee

Cooper 2004). In a few cases, dams are not relicensed, and those that are decommissioned must

be torn down. While this is unlikely to happen with Santee Cooper because the lakes hold such

recreational value, the utility must comply with all requirements to maintain water quality and

levels.

Recreation on the Lakes

Over time, Santee Cooper became incorporated into Berkeley County residents’ longer- term perspectives. The interviewees reported that they were soon able to appreciate Santee

Cooper’s contributions, though not until after World War II did the reservoirs, Lake Moultrie and

Lake Marion, become known as prime recreation spots. The interviewees and their families have enjoyed a wide range of experiences at the lakes, including fishing, swimming, boating,

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picnicking, and treasure hunting. Such offerings of the Santee Cooper lakes altered residents’

perceptions of the local landscape. Instead of the Santee basin’s being an historical, beautiful,

but difficult-to-traverse forested wetland, it became a wide-open recreational waterscape for

locals and tourists to enjoy.

Early on, striped bass were introduced to the lake as a sporting fish to expand recreation

and attract tourism, increasing the area’s economic growth (Figure 8.3). Santee Cooper claimed

to be the first to reproduce the anadromous striped bass (Morone saxatilis, also called rockfish)

in a landlocked, manmade lake. The lakes’ characteristics stumps, left from the hasty clearing of

the basin, never rotted as Santee Cooper had assumed they would. The old stumps both create

and hinder opportunities for great fishing in the lakes, as they are useful for attracting fish but are dangerous for fishing boats.

The post-World War II conditions of the Santee Cooper lakes created a new fishing

paradise that generated a buzz of excitement in the area. Several of the participants, both men

and women, recalled that “everybody wanted to fish” in the new lakes (Anderson). Several

interviewees marveled at the proximity of their town or homesteads to such a large lake. Santee

Cooper “put fishing in our front yard” (Davis). Many people had at least one fishing story to tell,

whether about catching The Big One or about some mishap. Henry Davis fondly remembered

reeling in a ten-pound largemouth bass during a cold day in February. Emma Lee recalled sitting

down “most any place” and catching lots of fish. She said,

I used to sit right on the edge of the dock with my little stool . . . and I used to catch the big old crappie. Biggest old crappies you ever saw. And of course I’d catch bream and stuff like that. And I’d fill a dishpan full before you could turn around.

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Fishing took place even at the former homesteads and farms, now under the lake. Clifford

Martin recalled fishing on the precise part of Lake Moultrie over the land his family used to

farm, right at the spot where he formerly “plowed a mule”:

All we had to do was walk across the dike, put a boat in there, and we done a lot of wading. We’d wade out there and take a fishin’ can. We didn’t have no store-bought material or rods and reels . . . [or] outboard motors. I’d catch a bream . . . right out there where I’d done rode horseback and everything, you know, and all that’s flooded.

Fishing brought in many people from outside of the immediate area as well. Several of

the participants were proud that when they traveled out of state, they encountered people who

recognized the Santee Cooper lakes for their excellent fishing. Locals boasted that Santee

fishing was some of best in the country. The sport fishing industry spurred minor economic

development in the forms of fishing guides, bait shacks, and fish camps. One restaurant located on the Tailrace canal, The Dock, was started a few years after Santee Cooper began operation and attracted locals, visitors, and fishermen. Donald Lewis complained, though, that most of the people coming to fish assumed the lakes were natural.

Some transformed the sandy shores of the lake into beach-like recreation areas. One of

these was called Bonneau Beach; one Shortstay, a recreational facility for military families; and

the other Lions Beach (or Thornley Beach, since it lay near the Thornley family property).

Several of these areas now offer family campsites. I spoke with several people who had

participated in running Lions Beach, a property leased by Santee Cooper to the local Lion’s club

for many years. At its beginning, the area featured a pavilion where sandwiches, drinks and ice

cream were sold and picnic tables where people could gather and eat. Later on, a permanent

building was constructed to house concessions, float rentals, pool tables, and arcade games.

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Clifford Martin said that on a weekend, he might rent out the picnic tables several times in a day and sell over a hundred cases of soft drinks. On Saturday nights, music groups came to play for dances.

The beach areas attracted “swarms of people” (Kennedy) who wanted to swim. There on the sandy shores, they could bathe in the mild temperatures of the shallow water with lifeguards on hand, just as at any public pool. The large freshwater lake attracted people even from the coastal city of Charleston. The place’s family atmosphere provided a safe place for children to play and a fun one for young people to mingle. Mary Nelson recalled church baptisms in the shallow waters, marriage ceremonies on the dock, and her proprietor husband’s watching out so that teenage girls and their dates did not run off without a chaperone. Many youth also visited the nearby Bonneau Beach recreation area during summer.

People also found pleasure in boating on the lake. Just as Emma Lee enjoyed her youthful days riding on the rural roads in the basin before the inundation, she also loved the

Sunday afternoon boat rides on the lake with her family. People water-skied and sometimes took moonlit cruises. Martha Bridges recalled being one of the first women to water-ski on the lake even though, she said, “They like to drown me, until somebody introduced me to the ski belt.”

She said her children “grew up on that lake skiing” and that they preferred staying in the water to being on land. She loved Lake Moultrie, noting, “I’ve spent most of my married life on the lake.” The locks were, and still are, a big attraction, ferrying boats from the lake level down to the tailrace canal, a seventy-five foot drop that takes only twenty minutes.

The basin’s width made the lake dangerous in a thunderstorm, which would come up quickly on the lake and whip the water into white-capped waves, making safe return to shore difficult for boaters. David Randolph said that one boating trip with the game warden took a turn

282 for the worse after a storm appeared. The waves were so big that he had to “go full throttle and head the boat into the waves” or see them cover the boat. He remembers, “It took us well on forty minutes or an hour just to gradually work ourselves to shore” (Randolph). A few people laughingly told of other mishaps, such as water flooding their boats. Mary Nelson reminisced about being stranded down the Cooper River at night in a boat taking on water and not knowing how she and her companions would get back. “This was before cellphones,” she reminded me.

That night, the boaters had to plug the hole using what they could find and dock the boat in the dark to find the nearest telephone. These recollections form stories of new experiences that create new impressions of the flooded landscape.

Boats also frequently become stranded on the many stumps still under the water’s surface. In January of 1987 Jacob France video-recorded the lake at a very low water level to remind himself of the location of the big stumps. He complained, “I can’t believe I spent that much money on a damn boat and risk it in an area like this!” The treacherous stumps scraped and punctured the hulls of many fiberglass boats. Other dangers included lake bottom sinkholes, in which people would become stuck in mud and sand. Locals who frequent the lake generally find it useful to store the knowledge of these hazards in their heads and index them as part of their cognitive maps of the lake. Others employ actual lake maps to mark and remember subsurface perils.

The new lakes also created opportunities for hunting the ducks and other wildlife attracted to the area. Santee Cooper established wildlife refuges as well as areas open to hunting.

Quail, deer, turkey, and ducks were the main game hunted after the creation of the lakes. For the first several decades of Santee Cooper’s operation, lake levels fluctuated since, in an effort to generate more electricity through the turbines, Santee Cooper was forced to draw the water

283 levels down. Several people recalled the lake’s being so low they could walk across it in some places; when the lake was so shallow, interviewees said, one could also see stumps for miles.

For this reason, treasure hunting became a frequent pastime for many people living near the lake.

In years of drought, the entire shoreline was exposed. People walked along the lake bottom and found such artifacts as shark teeth and Native American pottery and arrowheads. Bill Anderson realized that many of the artifacts came from the ancient Indian mounds covered by the lake. He and his family searched for, found, and kept pottery shards marked with lines and crosshatches.

Such prehistoric artifacts made amateur collectors out of many of the local residents. Other artifacts found included glass bottles, children’s marbles, dishes, and even old appliances such as cast iron stoves.

In the 1960s Santee Cooper made available many of its lake front lots for lease by the general public. People in the area could have houses on the lakeshore to enjoy with their families. Soon the lakefront lots became expensive, sought-after area real estate. Several properties surrounding the lake have since become upscale neighborhoods. Santee Cooper claims that seventy-five percent of the lakeshore is undeveloped; they are trying to maintain it as a natural area (Santee Cooper 2006).

Living near the site of such abundant recreation is not always safe and enjoyable, however. The fifty years after the creation of the lakes were marked by a harrowing event that almost became a catastrophe, as several interviewees recalled. On the morning of July 6, 1983, workers saw water gushing from a leak in the eastern section of the Pinopolis dam. A county- wide alert was issued about this hole in the dike; people feared the dike would collapse and burst.

Mary Nelson was at Lions Beach that day and remembers hearing a foghorn to warn swimmers to vacate the lake immediately because, if the dam did break, the swimmers would be pulled out

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into the lake by the suction and possibly drowned. People also feared that a break in the dam

would flood Fairlawn, a residential area near the Tailrace Canal. People panicked and formed

hurried plans to evacuate. Isabelle Carter said as she came home from the store, she was warned

to pack up her things and her dog Tid-Bit and leave her house. 2,000 area residents were

evacuated from their homes and ushered into the nearby Macedonia High School, which served

as a shelter (“2,000 Residents Evacuate” 1983).

A few people familiar with the dam ascertained the problem. Several interviewees recounted the story of Willie Varnish, an older gentlemen who had worked on the dike during its construction and became a local hero when he was summoned out of his retirement to solve the problem. Mr. Varnish had recalled that a wooden stoplog cap in the dam, made of creosoted pine timbers, had once closed a hole in an unused pipe during the dam’s construction in 1941. It had since rotted, allowing the water to rush through (Santee Cooper 1983). Bill Anderson also remembered this curious wooden gate built into the dam before the basin was flooded. He and his wife surmised that the gate had rotted. Thus, Santee Cooper was able to fix the problem within twenty-four hours by installing a steel-reinforced concrete cap to plug the hole. They then called off the emergency and allowed residents to return to their homes.

The Impact of Hugo

Berkeley County’s proximity to the Atlantic Coast in the outer coastal plain of South

Carolina made it vulnerable to Hurricane Hugo, another event that hurt residents materially and

emotionally. Interviewees often introduced the hurricane to describe how they felt regarding the

loss of trees or the impact of electricity. Hurricane Hugo, a category four storm when it landed

on the United States mainland, hit Charleston and Berkeley County on September 22, 1989, with

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150 mph winds. One of the most devastating storms in United States history, it caused over twelve billion dollars in damage (figure adjusted for inflation) (NOAA 2004), devastating the area, toppling millions of trees, destroying homes, and contributing to the deaths of thirty-five people. Interviewees talked about the impact of Hugo both in terms of how it, in their perceptions, affected the landscape and how it caused their temporary loss of modern conveniences such as electricity and running water. As described by Raymond Clark, “it was a very sobering time” for the region.

Hurricane Hugo altered the landscape by leveling both natural and anthropogenic features of the land, particularly trees and houses. Barbara Wilson reacted with the same feeling of loss upon seeing the destruction of Hugo as she did upon encountering the cleared basin lands: the area just looked “desolate.” Sally Thomas thought the impact of Hugo similar to that of Santee

Cooper, except that “Hugo did more damage than any of the Santee Cooper building ever did.”

Naomi Dillard said Hugo felled all of the trees surrounding her house; as they fell, they broke the windows. After numbering seventy downed trees in her yard, she said, she stopped counting.

She and her family crawled out of their house the next day to reach loved ones in the area.

Because of the fallen trees, many people could not get exit or enter their own yards without spending hours or days creating a path with a chainsaw. Interviewees described the destruction of the trees and the homes as “horrible” and “terrible.” Frances Bailey had this to say about Hugo:

Hugo was the worst [storm] we ever had. You remember Hugo? Oh, but that was a terrible time. When I saw my house . . . with all the trees on it, it broke my heart, I just burst out crying. I said, oh, we’re gonna kill ourselves getting this stuff off there.

Thousands of Berkeley residents were discouraged by the excessive destruction, debris and trees on their lands. The aftermath of Hugo disoriented people’s psyches. As they said, some places

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were no longer recognizable without the trees or buildings as they were. Mary Nelson said Hugo

took “all the pine trees” on her land and “tore up everything.” Hugo also wreaked havoc on the

lakes, demolishing docks and boats and eroding the shoreline.

As a result of Hurricane Hugo, people in the area were left without running water and

electricity for weeks. Some people closer to town were without it for about a week or two, while those in more remote areas did not get it back for a month. Henry Davis said he was without electricity for twenty-nine days. The lack of it deprived people of necessities such as well pumps, refrigeration, and air conditioning. Raymond Clark said sleeping at night in the humidity was difficult, since the holes in his roof admitted moisture, and that the most wonderful day was

“the day that [his] heat pump came back on and [he] had air conditioning in [his] house.” He

added that when he was a little boy and his family was without air conditioning, he didn’t know

the difference, but having had air conditioning and then not having it was a hardship. Martha

Bridges said she took the loss of electricity in stride because she remembered not having it as a

girl, but that her grandchildren were irritated not to have a working television in the house.

Some of the older interviewees recalled enjoying the lack of modern conveniences during

that period. Those who lived near the lake bathed there in swimsuits with their families, taking

their soap and towels. Said Raymond Clark, “We’d go down there every afternoon and just carry

soap and towels, jump off the end of the dock and wash.” Many people cooked on gas or

charcoal grills. Since residents needed to cooperate to remove the tall, collapsed pine trees from

their houses, they bonded with their neighbors. Barbara Wilson remembered that people flushed

their toilets with a bucket of water, since running water was not available. Interviewees

recognize that Santee Cooper started repairing the lines right away, working without pause to

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restore power to Berkeley County. Hurricane Hugo brought neighbors and community together to cooperate in the face of loss and tragedy.

Santee Cooper’s Impact on Berkeley County

The danger of large dam projects, note Marvin Harris and Donald Worster, is that they

can lead to a “hydraulic trap” in which society becomes rigidly dependent upon the new

infrastructure (Harris 1977, Worster 1985). Associated with this trap is heightened ecological

insecurity in tandem with exacerbated social inequality. The harnessing of water for irrigation in

the American West created the American tragedy of low-wage farm labor in California’s Central

Valley, the wretched poverty that Steinbeck portrayed in The Grapes of Wrath. If irrigation in

the West created California-style agriculture, characterized by a high degree of economic

inequality and widespread poverty among low-paid migrant farmworkers, what kind of economic

conditions did Santee Cooper did create?

The long-term social and economic picture post-Santee Cooper is not as grim as the

aftermaths of White’s “organic machine” and Worster’s “rivers of empire” (White 1995, Worster

1985). As I discussed in Chapter Five, Santee Cooper’s immediate effect on Moncks Corner was to bring in thousands of people to work and to provide jobs and commerce for the locals. After the initial social disorganization and the emigration of basin dwellers, the local economy grew more slowly than it had during the heyday of Santee Cooper construction. World War II encouraged modest industrialism in the area, especially in nearby Charleston where many

Berkeley County men sought work. Many families continued to farm, and others took jobs in local timber plantations and sawmills or in town. Santee Cooper jobs and the nascent recreational tourism industry also contributed employment to the local economy.

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The perceived success of Santee Cooper is similar to that of the Tennessee Valley

Authority (TVA). As a regional project, the TVA garnered the praise of many in the nation during and after its construction, and it still currently enjoys an “enviable reputation” as a hard- working agency even though it did not industrialize the Tennessee Valley (Conkin 1983). Local farmers, preservationists, and environmentalists, however, protested against the TVA’s proposed

Tellico Dam project in the 1960s. This opposition can be attributed to the national increase of environmentalism and concern over government destruction of natural resources in the pursuit of progress. Ironically, communities in recent decades have focused their efforts on the protection of endangered species and other environmental features of their local landscape as a way to preserve their communities against proposed developments (Read 1996).

Instead of being caught in the rigid structure of the “hydraulic trap” that Harris and

Worster predicted for all large-scale water projects, Santee Cooper is an example of a flexible utility that shifts its goals and purposes to meet changing economic and social trends. While it was created ostensibly for power and navigation, the major purposes of the Santee Cooper reservoirs are now sport fishing and lake tourism recreation. Santee Cooper as a public utility is well-known in the state for providing electricity to the coastal region, including the large cities of

Charleston and Myrtle Beach, but they also currently provide freshwater services to municipalities and local governments. A large majority (about thirty) of the informants think well of the increased roles and services of Santee Cooper, perceiving it now as advantageous to their lives and to Berkeley County.

What follows is a schema about people’s attitudes towards Santee Cooper. This schema shows why progress remains such a powerful yet dynamic ideal (and high-level schema) that overrides some of the pain and sacrifice people experienced upon losing their land, or their

289 communities, to Santee Cooper. These viewpoints mark the shift in people’s identities from rural dwellers to inhabitants of a modernized society and reveal their feelings of connectedness to the benefits of Santee Cooper, even though many do not work there (but probably receive an electric bill from the utility).

The generally positive outlook toward Santee Cooper, shared by more than two-thirds of those I interviewed, can be encapsulated in a single statement: “It put Moncks Corner on the map.” With this phrase, people are referencing the history of the progress that Santee Cooper brought to the community and its people. Santee Cooper, as the fourth-largest public utility in the United States, furnished electric power for a rural, underdeveloped region and helped to lead this portion of South Carolina into the twentieth century. It also brought a recreational fishing paradise that made the area a popular destination. That is what people mean when they say, “It put us on the map.” The “little town in the woods” (Bailey) was inescapably transformed by the large government hydroelectric project. Other people similarly expressed this idea. I list these statements here because people were able to assess the impact of Santee Cooper in concisely effective phrases:

−“It’s done wonders for Berkeley County.” (Bailey)

− “It brought jobs and lights.” (Wilson)

− “That’s what built Moncks Corner up is Santee Cooper.” (Adams)

− “It put ’em on the map with the fishing.” (Davis)

− “If it wasn’t for [Santee Cooper], Berkeley County wouldn’t be nothing.’” (Green)

− “It really has been a life saver for this town.” (Parker)

− “Santee Cooper built this town.” (O’Neal)

− “It made it very prosperous” (Anderson)

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− “It made it grow.” (Dillard)

− “It made Moncks Corner and Berkeley County.” (Griffin)

− “The coming of Santee Cooper was the salvation of this area” (Clark)

− “Santee Cooper is Berkeley County” (Lee)

These people metaphorically explained that Santee Cooper advanced Moncks Corner’s prominence in three main ways: by creating jobs, by producing and transmitting electricity, and by creating recreational fishing. Their use of metaphor reveals people’s recognition of progress and economic growth as features that will establish a particular location on a metaphorical landscape. Because of the economic benefit, not the land itself, the place becomes important and worthy of being established on a tool of geographical representation – either on an actual map or within one’s mental map.

Santee Cooper not only created jobs in the area but also spurred a modest amount of economic growth. Santee Cooper, its employees, and the workers it attracted spent money in town buying trucks, cars, and other goods from local retail businesses. Taxation of income and sales also helped the county provide services. The region benefited from the jobs and the electric power that it provided to local industries.

Interviewees considered the creation of jobs a major effect of Santee Cooper in that section of Berkeley County. Said Joseph Hammond, “It created jobs, industry came in, and that’s all it took. Most everybody you talk to either has [worked] or works for Santee Cooper in this area.” Santee Cooper is one of the main employers in the county. The addition of jobs created economic opportunities that would not have otherwise been seen in this region. For

Lawrence O’Neal, “Santee Cooper was the lifeblood of this community.” Emma Lee referred to the project as “a life-giving thing for our families.” Said Dale Green, “I think Santee Cooper’s

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one of the greatest things that ever happened to us,” and George Adams said enthusiastically that

there was “nothin’, nothin’ that I’d say woulda been better than Santee Cooper to come in here,

nothin’ in the world.” Daniel Evans notes that when he sits in church service on Sunday, he

realizes that the ushers who take up the collection are almost all Santee Cooper employees. Says

Evans, “And I just think, what would Moncks Corner be today if it wasn’t for Santee Cooper.”

Santee Cooper jobs were highly coveted in the area because they paid good wages and

offered generous benefits and promotions. Santee Cooper was a place where an employee could

rise from low-level employee to president of operations. James Harris said, “If you can be alert, and try to learn things, and help on everything that you can, you can work your way up there to

where you can get into the control room and operate the plant.” Others note that Santee Cooper

hired locally and brought in skilled workers such as engineers to work and live in the area. For

educated people, Frances Bailey admitted, Santee Cooper jobs often offered the chance to make

a good living. Jacob France said he enjoyed working at Santee Cooper because the company is

good to its employees and cares about its workers. He contrasted the family atmosphere of

Santee Cooper to other companies that “just want your blood and sweat and really don’t care.”

Several people said that Santee Cooper jobs changed people’s lives, providing them with a good

retirement.

Interviewees also cited the benefits of electricity in the area as a boon for Berkeley

County. Without the developments of Santee Cooper, said Dale Green, “we’d be back to the

Stone Age [laughed] like we were back in those days.” For the most part, people agreed that electricity made life better, easier, and more “civilized,” especially through modern conveniences, air conditioning, and electric tools. Naomi Dillard recognized that bringing electricity to people who had none was “one of the greatest blessings we’ve had.”

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African Americans positively viewed the benefits of Santee Cooper, including the general

modernized climate that also provided their children opportunities to advance. One African

American man said he appreciated Santee Cooper’s giving him a job in his retirement since it

was such a wonderful place to work. Several men claimed that Santee Cooper, in combination

with the availability of electricity and the area’s economic growth, helped “civilize” people

(Newton and Taylor). Alice Richardson claimed that the changes to the community have

brought “so much more enlightenment.” She recounted a story of her son’s standing in the field

one day and telling her he did not want to be a farmer. “He said, ‘The sun burn my head, and the dirt burn my feet,’ and he went on and he got an education,” she laughed. The new educational opportunities available allowed the youth, growing up in a more modernized society, to choose what they considered to be more fulfilling occupations. No longer were they tied to the occupation of farmer, but they could attain a higher level of education and better choose their

destinies.

The sport fishing industry created by the Santee Cooper lakes brought pleasure to many

locals and a small tourism industry to the surrounding towns. For years, people have sought

lakefront property from which to enjoy the view and the recreational opportunities. People

believed that the creation of Santee Cooper, in addition to creating jobs, electricity, and fishing,

sustained the area’s growth. Without Santee Cooper, said Emma Lee, “Moncks Corner wouldn’t

have grown, it would have stayed the same little old town.”

Other towns in the area, however, did not benefit from the same growth or improvements.

They did not experience the long-term economic or social gains of Moncks Corner. Described as

a thriving town of 1,200 in 1941 and seated near the Atlantic Coast Rail Line (The News and

Courier 1941o:4-F), St. Stephens declined in population over the years, as did Bonneau,

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Pineville and Eutawville. Such towns did not long benefit from the jobs created by Santee

Cooper. The communities of Russellville and Macbeth were cut in half by the lake. Of these

diminished communities, Emma Lee remarked, “some towns just die.”

The lake separated formerly close towns. Interviewees measured travel times between

towns by whether they could be reached across the lake or around it by road, since a person

could no longer travel directly to such locations “the way the crow flies” (Davis). The lake also

separated communities used to being near each other. One example discussed in the newspapers

today is the nearby towns of Lone Star and Rimini, which Lake Marion separated. Santee

Cooper directors and politicians promised that the towns would one day be connected again by a

bridge. Currently, the townspeople, with the backing of Sixth Congressional District

Representative James Clyburn, are seeking federal funding to build a ten-mile highway with a

bridge to connect the two towns and to spur economic development in this depressed region of

the state. Environmental groups, however, have filed lawsuits in an effort to stop this $150

million dollar transportation project. Such groups claim the highway will destroy Sparkleberry

Swamp, the largest intact wetland in central South Carolina (Fretwell 2006).

In terms of landscape, the size and scope of the project still amaze some of the residents who inhabit the area near the lake. To view of the lake landscape has changed slightly over time; the current lake landscape seems in some ways larger than the past basin landscape because from the views of the people who frequent the area, the water covers much territory. Since landmarks are difficult to locate on the lakes, one easily feels disoriented. Additionally, the roadway from one town to another no longer runs through the basin, but around. Traveling these roundabout

paths uses more time, and the towns seem farther apart. In these ways, the immense scale of the

294 new lake landscape in the memories of the participants did not seem to match the memories of the former basin landscape.

To illustrate with an example, some of the interviewees recalled their travels to see other parts of the two reservoirs. Mary Nelson, for instance, had recently taken a trip by car to

Manning, at a distance of about fifty miles. She marveled at how much land the lake covered

(Figure 8.4). “I never had any idea that it was as big and covered as much territory as it does,” she said. Because of the massive acreage of the lakes, a regular motorboat cannot traverse the entire area in one day.

The effects of Santee Cooper reached not just Moncks Corner but the entire state of

South Carolina. The public utility created a “satellite” effect by extending its lines to provide other places with power and the opportunity to attract industry and grow. Santee Cooper supported growth in popular areas such as Myrtle Beach and the entire “Grand Strand,” the coastline from Georgetown to the North Carolina border. George Adams said he has met people from Conway and Myrtle Beach who appreciate having their power from Santee Cooper.

Raymond Clark claimed that Santee Cooper had “led to the growth of the entire state.” A former vice president for Santee Cooper, Daniel Evans assessed the effects of Santee Cooper on the state of South Carolina in this way:

Look at what South Carolina has got back from it. They own it, and they get money back into the state treasury from it, every year. The state is not obligated for any of the expenses or liabilities of Santee Cooper. It’s the goose that laid the golden egg for the state, it really is. And I just think it’s a wonderful thing.

I asked people how Santee Cooper currently affected their lives. Several credit the creation of Santee Cooper with uniting them with their spouses to start their families. Those who worked there enjoyed the steady job, excellent benefits, and retirement opportunities that Santee

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Cooper provided. People also cited their love of fishing in the lakes as well as the low rates and

customer service of the state-owned utility. Several mentioned that they thought they had the

lowest electricity rates available anywhere. A few also mentioned their participation in the Good

Cents program and its assistance with conserving electricity and money in their homes. For the

most part, interviewees shared the opinion that the utility is managed well. Glenn Edwards likes

the state’s owning the utility. He said, “I think you get better service. I think that the people

they’ve picked to run the thing have done a great job.” A few of them expressed fears that it will

be sold into private hands and be lost to Berkeley County. Many of them consider Santee

Cooper a highly productive facility with dedicated employees; a few interviewees praised its safety record. The public utility also sends its employees to help with natural disasters and crises across the Southeast.

Santee Cooper is also known locally as a good corporate citizen. It supports local and

statewide education, artistic, historic, and charitable initiatives. For example, Santee Cooper

conserved the Old Santee Canal site as a museum and nature preserve for schoolchildren and

citizens alike. Several of the interviewees remarked on the generosity and goodwill of the state-

owned utility, believing that the organization and its employees helped the community in times

of crisis and need.

It is because of these enthusiastic responses about Santee Cooper that I revisit the

question of what was lost to the Santee basin residents versus what they may have gained. These

perceived sacrifices and benefits are part of the old and new landscapes, and they changed

people’s identities over time. The schemas most shared by the participants in this regard still

relate to that standard theme of progress. Even though Santee Cooper brought hardship to some,

Rose Johnson admitted, “I think all in all, people have gotten adjusted and are thankful for it.”

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Barbara Wilson said, “I’m glad it came along. ’Cause I think that the good outdoes the bad.”

Joseph Hammond admitted that progress may hurt a few, “but [it] helps so many more.” To

better comprehend some of the changes wrought by progress, Alice Richardson spoke a line

from a salient hymn: “‘So as the ages turn, we have to turn with each age.’” She added, “You

know, every year or less, something else comes up different.” The schema of progress was

widely shared among those who felt that Santee Cooper improved their quality of life.

A Shifting View of Progress

While in the last chapter I examined the interviewees’ memories of Santee Cooper’s

immediate effects on the landscape, in this section I analyze how they reconcile such a drastic

transformation over time. Today, people combine their feelings about the changes to their local

landscape with the notion of progress and the understanding of a modern economy. Ninety-one-

year-old Samuel Griffin reduced the sixty-five years since Santee Cooper was created to a simple

“I guess that’s progress.”

People seek to make sense of the past by linking it with present conditions. The cultural model of progress shifted as residents negotiated their views of Santee Cooper development over

time. Their memories of Santee Cooper probably do not reflect the same views that people held

at the time it was created. The recreational activities, propaganda, job creation, politicians, and other economic benefits of Santee Cooper shaped peoples’ opinions of it as a source of beneficial change to the region over the past sixty-five years. Within this negotiation of memory and

meaning, the sacrifices and destruction of the landscape are diminished, if not obliterated, by the

agents who want people to view the project as having brought the community prosperity.

Instead, the touted benefits of Santee Cooper became integrated with their beliefs about Santee

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Cooper as the interviewees grew up to become willing participants of a modernized society.

This change was effected by the politics of memory, since shifting views over time tend to

follow the dominant cultural model publicized and disseminated by the official and political

elites.

Santee Cooper must maintain a confident official history because the public utility is

obliged to consistently reinvent itself to remain relevant and beneficial to area residents. Santee

Cooper’s current methods of business are threatened in several ways. First of all, the large

reservoirs are no longer required for electric power, and Santee Cooper must fight to retain its

FERC license based on other advantages, such as the maintenance of its lakes for recreation.

Second, Santee Cooper must prove that it does not generally damage the environment; it tries to

do so by sponsoring environmental programs. Third, Santee Cooper faces transformation into a

private corporation by conservative state political interests, including the current governor, who

think the government of South Carolina should not be the producers or providers of electric

power to its citizens. To remain in operation, Santee Cooper must consistently curry the public’s

favor. To do so, they very carefully manage their public relations and historical record. The

resulting cheerful and official stories of Santee Cooper promote a positive vision that people

incorporate into their own consciousnesses.

Even for those who made their peace with the inundation of the basin, there still exists a

tension between development and the destruction of a way of life. People fear that the long

reach of progress will continually encroach upon their land and their lives. This apprehension

was particularly pronounced among the people who had lost their land to Santee Cooper between

1940 and 1941, as they did not realize that Santee Cooper and the electrification of the countryside would produce further seizures through eminent domain.

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In the early 1980s, Santee Cooper and the Army Corps of Engineers created the

rediversion project, which would build a canal through the St. Stephens area of Berkeley County.

The proposed route would displace more families only forty years after the original

condemnation. Santee Cooper again sought to buy people’s lands along the proposed route of

the canal. The land condemnation mainly affected the African American families living near St.

Stephens. Mary Ann Powell said she remembered people’s being frightened that the government

would take people’s lands again and that they did not want to lose special elements of their

farms, such as valuable crops and fruit and nut trees.

Other regional developments, also attributed to progress, threaten more local landowners.

Jeannie Morris said that her father, after having had all his land taken away from him by Santee

Cooper, faced another land seizure when the Alumax company wanted a right-of-way on his

property to build a power transmission line. A few interviewees object to Santee Cooper’s

selling the lots they condemned and appropriated so long ago. Santee Cooper sells these lake-

adjacent lots, now valuable waterfront property, at premium prices. Katherine Jackson said she

felt frustrated and helpless because she could not afford the high re-purchase price for the land

Santee Cooper had taken from her family. She claimed to be sickened by the thought that

“they’re making all these profits off of the backs of our grandfathers.”

Today a development like Santee Cooper would not be considered progressive or

economically sound. To begin with, companies and governments no longer build large dams in

the United States because hydropower has ceased to be cost effective and minimum stream flows must be maintained on most rivers. Utilities must also justify the continued existence of such dams in a political climate that expects environmental concerns to be balanced with economic goals. Today most power companies rely on coal and gas to generate electric power, but the

299 most progressive utility companies are exploring alternative fuel sources that minimize environmental degradation.

Also under the guise of progress, large suburban developments have rapidly proliferated.

Developers are planning and building these new housing tracts along the I-26 corridor northwest of Charleston. Timber companies with long standing in the region, owning 177,000 acres among them, are quietly selling their land to real estate developers who plan to construct as many as

30,000 homes in the area. Because the timber industry has developed methods for growing more trees on less land, they divest themselves of their excess land to higher bids (Bartelme and

Menchaca 2004a). Conservation groups such as the Nature Conservancy and the Lord Berkeley

Land Trust are quickly trying to buy and place large acreage parcels under conservation status

(Bartelme and Menchaca 2004b).

The people interviewed realize that so-called progress is now entering Berkley County in the form of these mega-subdivisions. Glenn Edwards remarked that soon, “there will be houses all around here, and it’s coming fast.” Some are uncomfortable with the pace of change and development. Isabelle Carter said she regrets the clearing and construction on new lots because she prefers to gaze on open spaces of land. Others resent such intrusions as increased road traffic and intersections with traffic lights. Some sense an erosion of community bonds, since people are moving in and “you don’t know your neighbors” anymore.

Now, progress holds a different meaning for many citizens of Berkeley County than it did sixty-five years ago, something a connotation that supports what Richard Norgaard (1994) and other critics of progress argue (Kunstler 1993, Almond et al. 1982). In the era of modernity,

Americans viewed progress as economic growth that brought in jobs and industry. Currently, progress is viewed by many as too expansive in its destruction of the local environment and its

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exploitation of natural resources. Additionally, people criticize the homogeneous groupings of

houses, stores and restaurants that encroach on their cherished rural landscapes. They believe the

new style of progress exacts too high a social cost, bringing higher crime rates, destroying trust

among people in a community, a causing life to be just “too complicated.” Many generations

have regarded progress as unstoppable, and the current one feels unable to control the suburban

housing explosion happening in its communities. Citizens recognize that their society and the

governmental emphasize allowing the free market to engage in unregulated growth and

expansion.

While a personal evaluation of the worth and usefulness of Santee Cooper was not necessary for my research, I could not help but form such an opinion, having examined the

project’s past and present. Because most interviewees regarded Santee Cooper as a positive

force in their own lives, I found my own opinion shaped by theirs. In my estimation, Santee

Cooper is an oversized relic of an era when government, driven by the goals of progress,

economic support, and technocratic innovation, tried to benefit its citizens. The WPA, the PWA, and the FSA, the large federal bureaucracies that characterized the New Deal, are gone, though the legacy of that era’s government works remains: the jobs created, the public works built, and the cultural artifacts its artists and writers produced.

The Santee Cooper region had not seen such tremendous change since the Civil War helped tear down a population’s way of life. The Civil War and Reconstruction, however, wreaked wholesale destruction throughout the old South, permanently ending the plantation lifestyle many years before the advent of Santee Cooper. By the 1930s, plantation remnants were historical, not functional: the plantation families’ attempts to maintain their lifestyle amounted to a simulacrum of the antebellum era. The existing tenant farming system kept many

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families in poverty and under mortgage, their meals meager and their futures uncertain.

Although Santee Cooper further destroyed the ties that many families had to their lands, it also

introduced economic growth and modern conveniences that brought opportunity and aspiration

for better lives to an entire region.

Santee Cooper’s significance lies both in the sacrifices it required from the state’s citizens and in the benefits it conferred on them. A great number of people were forced to

relinquish much dear to them, but their losses were brought gains. Homes, farms, and a

historically-imbued landscape were destroyed by a project that created jobs, material comforts,

and economic improvement for future generations of South Carolinians. Even though Santee

Cooper did not bring promised industrial growth and manufacturing to the area, it provided

future educational opportunities and means by which many American dreams could be fulfilled.

Santee Cooper remains a public corporation that seeks to benefit the area. The services and

employment it provides are deeply appreciated by this older generation of Berkeley County

residents. Most residents of Berkeley County who participated in my study view the building of

Santee Cooper as a change for the better.

Summary

Santee Cooper drastically and devastatingly changed the regional landscape. Not only

was the basin inundated, but the change in the courses of the rivers also ruined prime freshwater

and saltwater marshes along the Santee River Delta and along the smaller Cooper River.

Ecological communities, including the trophic structure of vegetation and wildlife, were altered

by the major change in hydrology in the coastal plain. Some of the basin area lands such as the

Santee National Wildlife Reserve are reverting to secondary swamps. In their efforts to improve

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the estuarine damage, the Army Corps of Engineers rediverted the Santee River to supply the

delta with more fresh water.

The interviewees remembered that local wildlife was significantly affected by the Santee

Cooper project. They similarly recalled that Hurricane Hugo’s destruction of their local landscape in 1989 was similar to the destruction Santee Cooper caused. The new lakes created a recreational paradise for fishing and boating; for many this benefit justifies the lakes’ continued

existence. Such recreational opportunities reformulated the meaning of the landscape as a place to enjoy with their families and friends.

Most of the interviewees perceive Santee Cooper positively and feel goodwill towards it;

they also credit Santee Cooper with providing an excellent job base and advancing national

recognition of their community. They are increasingly uneasy, however, about a recent trend in

the name of progress: developers turning the local countryside into large housing subdivisions.

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CHAPTER 9

CONCLUSION

In this dissertation, I rely on a multidisciplinary perspective to explain how people from

the past and in the present interpreted the changes to the Santee basin landscape transformed by

the New Deal-era Santee Cooper hydroelectric project. This work is most closely associated

with the aims of cultural anthropology, but it considers the added perspectives of environmental

history. The methods I employ follow from both cultural models theory and environmental

history.

In order to identify the perceptions of the changing cultural landscapes, I researched archival documents from the 1930s and 1940s to locate original historical texts that expressed opinions about the creation of the Santee Cooper dams and lakes. By focusing on the personal life stories of the participants, I then conducted oral history interviews and asked about the roles of the basin landscape as well as of Santee Cooper in their lives. I analyzed these interviews to identify prominent themes that illuminate an understanding of how people interpret the landscape and large-scale changes to it.

In this dissertation, I also trace the history of land occupancy in the basin from European settlement of the area. For several hundred years the basin landscape had been used almost exclusively for agriculture, mainly rice and cotton, the region’s major economic resource.

Though shifting from centralized living under the plantation system to scattered settlements of small farms and tenant plots in the postbellum landscape, human settlement was organized around the production of these all-important cash crops. This agricultural legacy left its imprint on the landscape in the form of abandoned fields, most of which were reverting to ecological secondary swamps at the time of the Santee Cooper development. To support their construction

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of the dams, the project’s promoters commonly referred to these areas and forests as

“wastelands” lacking economic importance.

By the 1930s, the coastal plain of South Carolina was mired in poverty; whether

inhabitants remained on their farms or sought new types of work, they faced declining

opportunities. The damming and inundation of the Santee basin landscape by Santee Cooper

occurred during a time of shifting historical and social developments in the South, the nation,

and the world. As a result of a public policy to create jobs and to help people find work, the

government introduced a technocratic solution to the economic depression facing South Carolina

and the rest of the country by implementing large-scale infrastructure improvements. These

colossal, engineered undertakings created both jobs and opportunities for industrial advancement

in areas such as the economically depressed Lowcountry of South Carolina. Later, the imminent

threat of war on the world stage became an even more urgent reason to implement a

technological solution that would support economic and national security goals.

My evaluation of the historical documents and the contemporary ethnography yield

useful results regarding the cultural models of present and past landscapes. To compare the analysis of the documents written by the promoters and opponents of the Santee Cooper project,

I needed to examine the discourse as it occurred sixty-five or more years ago. Before people could believe that such a massive project was possible, they debated its perceived merits and faults.

To recapitulate the results of the text analysis comparison, the political and economic

elites were debating with mainly social and cultural elites over the meaning of the Santee basin landscape. The over-arching schema of “progress” is the most widely-employed mental model that the promoters attributed to the development of the landscape. For the promoters of Santee

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Cooper, economic progress would help the region recover by promising development. For the

protesters of the project, however, progress is that which would destroy the landscape and their

way of life. Each side employed rhetorical strategies to persuade the public to agree; the use of

these strategies reveals that the opposing sides were stakeholders interested in maintaining their

vested interests.

Santee Cooper was conceived of and supported by political and economic elites in the

state. The promoters invoked several integrated and hierarchically-arranged schemas to

strategically argue for the creation of the project. Underneath the overarching high-level schema

of progress lay the main supporting schema of promised economic benefit to the state in the form

industry attracted by Santee Cooper’s cheap power. A second schema supporting the cultural

idea of progress was the guarantee of federally-funded employment in the impoverished area.

The events leading to United States involvement in World War II provided the promoters with an

additional claim of urgency. This group also advocated wider government involvement by

proclaiming that Santee Cooper should be a publicly-owned utility. While the schemas of

national defense and public power did not directly support the idea of progress, they invoked

higher-level ideals such as patriotism to serve as rhetorical strategies in arguing for the same

goal.

The opponents of the project did not focus on criticizing the purported benefits of the

Santee Cooper project; instead, they decried its wholesale destruction of a landscape. In this way, they acknowledged the promoters’ dominant cultural model of progress, but they criticized

the project’s disadvantages. Many of those writing protests belonged to a culturally elite group:

they were descendents of the plantation families of the Santee Basin. To state their position

succinctly, they operated from a mid-level schema opposed to destroying their way of life. Their

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emotional attachment to the homes, land, wildlife, and historical features of the landscape

comprised the lower-level schemas this group expressed, arising from their personal experiences.

Protesters also opposed the project based on the schemas of being forced from their homes under

threat of condemnation by their own government.

A major finding of the research based on the text analysis of historical documents is that

the higher-level schemas of progress and patriotism were used to promote the Santee Cooper

project, but people protested against it using lower-level schemas of their personal experience

with the landscape. The more widely disseminated the document, such as a speech or editorial,

the more likely a document contained the high-level schemas of cultural ideals. In contrast, the

lower-level schemas were most likely found in personal correspondence.

The oral history ethnography of the dissertation contributed the essential perspectives of people who were not necessarily part of either group of elites but were ordinary citizens living in

Berkeley County. The interviewees represented the majority of the population instead of the political or social elites. With generosity and kindness, they imparted a great deal of their knowledge about past events, more than I could derive from books and archives. Most importantly, they oriented me to the most meaningful parts of their life histories, looking back from a contemporary perspective. The most compelling parts of the oral history ethnography

were the reflections of the interviewees on events they have experienced in their lives. They

combined their reflections on their personal life stories with the degrees of satisfaction and regret

they expressed over Santee Cooper.

What do the results of this study mean for cultural models? Cultural models theory

played a large role in my methodology. It was most useful in the research and analysis phases of

my study, since the process yielded much archival and ethnographic data. The analysis of the

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historical texts revealed clearly-patterned themes that illuminated the historical facts. The

cultural models process employed in the oral history interviews, however, was unwieldy from

the start, although this produced a lot of useful data for analysis.

Cultural models are both collective and individual among people who have similar life experiences within a shared community. These models support the assertion that memories and

meanings are structured, organized, linked and embedded together. When applied to an analysis

of cultural landscape change, the cultural models reveal public and internalized views of those

elements salient in the lives of the landscape inhabitants.

The fundamental usefulness of cultural models has been to separate the salient from the

trivial to uncover the meaning of human events. In this process, two considerations can be

studied: how people perceived the landscape as it used to be and how people interpreted the

changes to the landscape as a result of the development. The area residents retained mental maps of the basin that demonstrated its salient features, such as inhabited sites (homes and farms), natural sites (springs, creeks, swimming holes), and manmade landmarks (plantation houses, cemeteries, roads, and churches). Their environmental knowledge of the basin included their shared and individual experiences with it. From their personal associations and experiences with the landscape, the inhabitants developed a sense of scale about and attributed certain meanings to it.

Cultural models also examine historically how inhabitants perceive landscape change

over time. Their mental construction of the landscape is mediated by three main categories:

scale, features, and meaning. People expressed their understanding of the Santee basin’s scale

when they talked about how the land appeared to them, such as “it was nothing but forests” or

they talk about “the whole area.” Landscape features are observable (or other sensory) elements

308 that are either natural or anthropogenic such as houses in the Santee basin or even the large dams created by Santee Cooper. Additionally, people recalled the streams, plantations, and roads that they frequented as youth. Finally, Berkeley County residents expressed landscape meanings in accordance with their personal attachments and memories, such as their family homes and farms and how these contributed to a feeling of attachment to the land. The dominant cultural ideal of progress was one particular meaning fixed upon the landscape by the promoters. The protesters, on the other hand, called upon their intimate experiences and knowledge of the landscape to show how the landscape had personal, historical, and natural significance.

To create the models of cultural inhabitation and remembrance of place is to acknowledge the individual, social, and economic meanings conferred upon the land. The competing agents and the different interpretations of the land’s meaning and use are acknowledged in the past as in the present. Basin dwellers knew the development was coming, and they resented it. The struggle between progress and destruction continues in the minds of the residents I interviewed just as it continues in current debates over local land use and in public policy.

The personal stories that comprise most of the responses to my open-ended questions about people’s individual histories with Santee Cooper reflect the cognitive tendency to recount the past in gestalt-like wholes. Since these participants experienced common events in the landscape, they imparted to my research the project’s true history and its authentic effects, as testified to by their experiences. The personal anecdotes shared by the interviewees were combined with reflections on the meaning of past events that illuminated the significance of the cultural landscape in their lives. These meanings are shaped by a negotiation with the present

309 since the official history and trends toward modernization influence inhabitants’ memories of past landscapes.

To compare cultural models formed from historical documents with one formed by contemporary ethnography is to evaluate not only the themes and opinions but also the background and motivations of the authors and participants. The writers of the original historical documents were driven by their support or protest of a controversial event: in this case, the construction of the Santee Cooper hydroelectric project. Their demographic backgrounds and life circumstances dictated which side the writers of the historical text documents would defend.

Like history and progress, a change in public opinion concerning a momentous event is an inexorable process. This change finds its basis in the politics of memory, since contemporary views of past events negotiate and alter the way people remember those events. These views are in part managed by Santee Cooper and those in power so that the public utility validates its continued operation. Those who lived during the exciting transformation wrought by the Santee

Cooper project view the development today as something as normal as the air they breathe. The passage of time and age alters memory, but so do the dominant cultural views in a society where people are more likely to look back on the project through the contemporary lens of how it affects their lives today. One might view a specific, if tumultuous, past event as less significant upon comparing it with the accumulated tragedies and triumphs of one’s own life.

The politics of memory influence this perspective: when reflecting upon and opining about past events, people often consider the dominant views of society. Because of the influence of politics, economics, or society, people view the past differently now than they would have years or decades ago. These collective memories demonstrate that the Santee Cooper event was highly salient and shared in participants’ minds. The interviewees’ voices reveal that most of

310 them occupied the middle ground between the New Deal-era politicians who ardently promoted the project and the basin landholders who passionately opposed it. They straddled this space in part because the passing of time had dimmed the protests, but also because most were regular citizens who sought to reap the benefits of economic growth. A significant subset of interviewees, however, still resents and disagrees with the goals of Santee Cooper. Generally, these participants did not support the project because Santee Cooper forced the sale and abandonment of their family lands. Their voices are generally not heard in the official recounting of Santee Cooper history. The politics of memory explain not only how people’s views about an event change over time to match the dominant cultural ideals, but also how some opinions and memories are silenced over time.

Coming out of the Great Depression, the people living in Berkeley County, in and around the small town of Moncks Corner, had a modest outlook for the future. They wanted jobs, educational opportunities, and a life that was a little easier for their children. The land they occupied was dear and important to them, but the decision to leave it was not theirs to make. So they did what most humans do best, adapt to new situations and surroundings with resourcefulness and hard work.

Such adaptation to their new situation allowed them to enjoy some of the most remarkable achievements of the twentieth century: modern conveniences such as electric lights, refrigeration, radios, television, and air conditioning. The availability of jobs allowed them to increase their expectations of life and their aspirations of education and employment. In this era, these people also saw the eradication of diseases such as malaria, smallpox, and typhoid, which had plagued their state for years. They were also able to enjoy the newly-altered landscape for

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what it became, a recreational paradise of fishing and boating that increased the significance of

their town. They credited Santee Cooper with these achievements.

It is important to note that this generation in this region of South Carolina sacrificed

particularly for the future, relinquishing both land and their traditional manner of living, such as

their agricultural occupations. The generation I interviewed is often spoken of today as the

“greatest generation” for surrendering so much of themselves for the war effort in the 1940s.

The home front was mobilized to sacrifice much of what was significant and convenient to them.

Many of the men I spoke to served their country in ways that strengthened their patriotic resolve and ties to their government.

The parents of the interviewees, the earlier generation that is now gone, could be rightly described as the ones who suffered the most from losing their land, because so many of the

research participants were young and impressionable when Santee Cooper arrived, so they were

more amenable to a new way of life. Even though this new way meant giving up their land, the

generation I interviewed recalled the pain expressed by their elders as more significant than their

own. They acknowledged that the tradition of ties to their land would never be the same again.

Their parents’ generation took on an unequal share of the costs, losses, and burdens so the Santee

Cooper project could become the success it did.

What meanings do the results of my research hold for cultural interpretations of large-

scale landscape change? I find that people view landscapes in terms of the past, present and future. In addition, the expressed views of landscape accommodate both material (economic and political) and subjective (emotional) meanings. Sometimes these meanings are negotiated within the minds of individuals living there. This method of negotiating the meanings of landscape endorses the development of landscape anthropology as a theoretical perspective: by employing

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the landscape concept in my research, I demonstrate that landscape encompasses both the material and the symbolic. One such example is that inhabitants perceive a change in personal attachment to land; particularly, they sense a newly-developed lack of feeling toward the land in current times. The way inhabitants negotiate the meanings of landscape also bolsters the cognitive view of landscape, that land and the special places within it are recalled, mapped, and traveled within the mind. In this case study, landscape is also the site of contested meanings and displays of the consequences of political power and economic development.

So how do the area’s inhabitants today perceive large-scale landscape change? The most

significant element of landscape change, according to both the historical documents and the

current residents, is people’s acknowledgement of the tension between progress and destruction in the use of a landscape. In the instance of Santee Cooper, the single most prevalent theme

described by those writing sixty-five or more years ago as well as those interviewed today would be progress. A second theme, however, would be an acknowledgement of the destruction of a unique landscape and a way of life. When residents discuss changes to a landscape that contains places of emotional attachment and/or ecological importance, they generally reference both of these schemas. For Santee Cooper, the need for economic opportunity in the form of industry and jobs clashed with the historical significance and personal value of ancestral homesteads.

The cultural model elicited from the historical documents mainly differs from that of the

present-day interviews in the lessened intensity of opinions about the project: the politics of

memory influenced the way most interviewees think about the past in view of present

modernizing trends. In the past sixty or more years, Berkeley County residents benefited

materially from the development and employment brought to the region; such benefits of Santee

Cooper formed part of their collective memory of the project. Emotional attachment to place has

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not been entirely supplanted, though: the sub-set of interviewees whose families owned basin

land retain lingering feelings of resentment and bitterness. Some of these participants gradually

accepted the benefits Santee Cooper brought to their community, but a small proportion of the

interviewees remain angry at their loss.

Another important question is what people lost in comparison to what they gained. In the

historical texts, each side urgently conveyed its support of economic industrial development and

jobs. Further, the promoters minimized locals’ land losses by arguing that the basin was a wasteland and that owners would be compensated for their properties. The opposing camp, on the other hand, argued that inhabitants would lose important historical and family ties to the land.

In addition, they feared losing their rights to the increasing reach of government in their lives. In part, acknowledging the valid points of the other view did not suit the arguments in support of or in protest of the project. Also, the writings of the 1930s could not offer a long-term evaluation of the project.

When this question was posed to the interviewees, however, many perceived the

consequences of the destruction of land and homes as emotional loss. Most were eager to

portray the long-term results of Santee Cooper as beneficial for their material well-being and for society in general. Overall, my research reveals that, in the opinions of people living in the present and in the debates of the past, destruction is a corollary of progress. Just as the Santee

Cooper project wrought its changes on the basin landscape, this South Carolina New Deal project altered people’s cultural associations and emotional ties to the land they once inhabited.

Their loss of identity as agriculturalists in a rural community, along with that of the natural and historical basin landscape, comprised their major loss.

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In this dissertation I demonstrate that negotiated meanings of past and present landscapes are built upon a diverse but primary foundation: the features, scale, and meaning of the landscape are cognized in the minds of those living there. As landscapes are altered by large developments, the changes are incorporated into the transformed meanings that promote the dominant cultural mode of society. Lengthy or intense periods of landscape and social change, in turn, mold inhabitants’ identities and give them reason to consider contemporary views along with emotional and collective memories of the past.

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FIGURES, IMAGES, AND MAPS

Figure 1.1 Proposed Santee Cooper Project Map. This map, circa 1939, is of the proposed Santee Cooper project with the upper lake (“Santee Reservoir”) and lower lake (“Pinopolis Reservoir”) that occupy the central coastal plain between Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina. Map courtesy of Clemson University Library Special Collections, Harry T. Poe Collection, Clemson, SC.

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Figure 2.1 Geological Cross-Section of Santee Basin. From Stephen Taber’s 1939 report on the Santee Cooper project.

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Figure 2.2 Cook’s Map. This image of St. John’s Berkeley was taken from James Cook’s “A Map of the Province of South Carolina” that shows the plantations along the Santee River and the town of Moncks Corner in the lower middle. Image courtesy of Berkeley County GIS.

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Figure 2.3 USDA Aerial Photo of Black Oak Section. This basin USDA aerial photograph (c.1938) shows the Black Oak area with forests, cutover land and some lands under cultivation. In addition, roads are shown. Photo courtesy of Berkeley County GIS.

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Figure 2.4 USDA Aerial Photo of Pinopolis Dam Site. This is a USDA aerial photograph (c.1938) of where the Pinopolis powerhouse will be built on the left hand side. The Atlantic Coast Line Railroad cuts through the middle of the picture. Photo courtesy of Berkeley County GIS.

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Figure 2.5 Map of interpolated 1942 vegetation salinity tolerance classes in the Santee River Delta. The zones are color-coded by vegetation types that are adapted to certain salinity zones. The purple line indicates the boundary for 1942 vegetation data. Map was produced by Zachary Nixon and provided courtesy of The Nature Conservancy.

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Figure 2.6 Mouzon’s Map. This map (c.1786) covers the site of the proposed Santee Canal in St. Johns, St. Stephens and St. James parishes and was created by Henry Mouzon. His proposal to follow the existing waterways was not accepted. It highlights the watershed features such as swamps and rivers as well as towns and other landmarks. Image courtesy of Berkeley County Historical Society.

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Figure 2.7 NOAA Satellite Map, 1996. This raster data satellite image map shows the state of South Carolina (bounded by the Savannah River and Hartwell and Clark Hill lakes on the left and drawn boundaries on the top). In the middle-right of the image you can see the original course of the Santee River and how it has been diverted into the two lakes.

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Figure 3.1 Santee Cooper Drawing. This c.1939 map is a graphical depiction of the Santee Cooper project that shows how the lakes are being promoted for their “social value.” Map courtesy of Clemson University Library Special Collection, Clemson, SC.

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Figure 5.1 A small farmhouse in the basin with shutters on the window. Picture courtesy of Santee Cooper.

Figure 5.2 Kerosene lanterns and primitive insulation in a farmhouse. FSA photo, Library of Congress.

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Figure 5.3 This is an image of downtown Moncks Corner in the 1930’s by the railroad tracks. Image provided courtesy of Jean Guerry.

Figure 5.4 Another downtown scene in Moncks Corner from the 1930’s. Image provided by Jean Guerry.

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Figure 5.5 Gaillard’s Map. This is a section of the “Map of Berkeley 1900-1962” compiled by J. P. Gaillard of Charleston. It shows the former tracts of the farms and plantations that were inundated by the waters of Lake Moultrie. Image courtesy of Berkeley County GIS.

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Figure 5.6 Black Oak Church was for many years an Episcopal chapel-of-ease in Berkeley County. Its doors, shutters, pews, and altar were reused in other buildings in Pinopolis, including the Trinity Episcopal church and some private residences. From Thomas Waterman’s book, A Survey of the Early Buildings in the Region of the Proposed Santee and Pinopolis Reservoirs in South Carolina (1939).

Figure 5.7 Somerset, beloved home of the Cain family and site of a flower bulb farm, sat in disrepair in the late 1930’s. It was burned before the Santee basin was flooded. Image from the Waterman book.

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Figure 5.8 Eutaw Plantation, built by the Sinkler family, features a foundation of bricks from a British outpost of the Battle of Eutaw Springs. Image from the Waterman book.

Figure 5.9 The Hanover House was disassembled and rebuilt on the campus of Clemson University. This image of the Hanover house shows the brick chimney. Image from Waterman’s book.

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Figure 6.1 Photo of Tree Being Cut. Here, a WPA clearing worker uses makeshift scaffold to cut at the trunk of a large cypress tree. Photo courtesy of Santee Cooper.

Figure 6.2 Photo of Cleared Land. A denuded landscape in the basin. Farm Security Administration photo from the Library of Congress.

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Figure 6.3 Santee Cooper Viewing Stand. This building allowed visitors to see the clearing and construction taking place below. Photo provided courtesy of Bonnie Weeks Baggett.

Figure 6.4 Photo of the Big Dig. This shows the “big hole” dug as the foundation of the power house and dam. Note the back of the viewing stand at the top. Photo courtesy of Santee Cooper.

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Figure 6.5 Constructing the hydroplant at the Pinopolis dam site. Photo from Santee Cooper.

Figure 6.6 Giant Turbines. Men on a break from assembling one of the giant turbines in the hydro plant. Photo courtesy of Santee Cooper.

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Figure 6.7 Rural Electrification. Linemen do the work of rural electrification by setting out lines in the countryside. Photo courtesy of Santee Cooper.

Figure 6.8 Mosquito Eradication. Health and Sanitation workers on the front line of defense against malarial mosquitoes, carrying tanks of larvicidal oil for spraying standing pools of water. Photo courtesy of Santee Cooper.

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Figure 7.1 Waiting to Move. The last days left at home in the basin. FSA photo, Library of Congress.

Figure 7.2 Moving Day. A building is being moved out of the basin area. Many times the brick steps such as these were left behind. Photo courtesy of Santee Cooper.

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Figure 7.3 Tearing Down. A man sits as a house is in the process of being torn down. FSA photo, Library of Congress.

Figure 7.4 A lone chimney after a dwelling was burned. FSA photo, Library of Congress.

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Figure 7.5 Remains are placed in new boxes for re-interment by the WPA. FSA photo, Library of Congress.

Figure 7.6 Removing Graves. WPA workmen dig in the work of the moving the graves out of the basin. FSA photo, Library of Congress.

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Figure 8.1 Map of classified vegetation in the Santee River Delta, 1999/2000, color-coded by salinity class. Map was produced by Zachary Nixon and used with permission of The Nature Conservancy.

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Figure 8.2 Map of Santee River Delta showing vegetation tolerance change classes from 1942 to 1999/2000. The yellow and red portions indicate changes toward vegetation in greater saline environments, while the green color indicates changes toward more freshwater adapted vegetation. Map produced by Zachary Nixon and provided as a courtesy of The Nature Conservancy.

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Figure 8.3 Happy fisherman after a day’s catch. Photo courtesy of Santee Cooper.

Figure 8.4 The Santee Dam and spillway, with gates allowing the waters from the upper lake to enter the diversion canal. Photo courtesy of Santee Cooper.

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REFERENCES

Primary Historical Texts Used for Analysis

“An Employe” [sic] 1939 Defends Project. The News and Courier, April 29: 4.

“An Observer” 1939 Work on Santee-Cooper Project Shows No Evidence Early Start. Berkeley Democrat, March 9: 1.

Babcock, Havilah 1939 Kilowatts and Fish. South Carolina: The Sportsman’s Paradise. 1(2): 20-21.

“Berkeley” 1939 Powers Opposed. The News and Courier, May 16: 4.

Boyer, William C. 1939 Santee Analyzed. The News and Courier, February 25: 4.

Brailsford, J. M. 1941 Excerpt of letter written to the PWA that appeared in a press release from the Federal Works Agency, Public Works Administration, June 13, 1941 – Release No. 78, page 2. National Archives Record Group 162, Entry 27

Byrnes, James F. 1934 Letter to Harold Ickes, Federal Emergency Administrator of Public Works dated December 14. James F. Byrnes Collection. Box 55, Folder 4. Clemson University Library Special Collections, Clemson SC.

Carmody, John 1939 Text of Remarks by John M. Carmody, Administrator, Federal Works Agency, at the Ceremony at the Santee-Cooper Power House (PWA Docket 4329-P-R) on November 20, 1939. Federal Works Agency Information Division. National Archives. Record Group 162, Entry 27.

Childs, Margaretta P. 1938 Against Santee Project. The News and Courier, September 14: 4.

Cooper, Robert M. 1939 Contract Let Pinopolis Dam. The Berkeley Democrat, April 20: 1,4.

Cozby, J. D. 1939 Sees No Room for Debate. The News and Courier, May 26: 4.

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Cross, Sr, D. W. 1941 Santee Payment. The News and Courier, April 13: 4.

“De Gustibus” 1939 What Do the People Say? The News and Courier, May 14: 4.

DeHay, Arthur H. 1941 Excerpt of letter written to the PWA that appeared in a press release from the Federal Works Agency, Public Works Administration, June 13, 1941 – Release No. 78, pages 2-3. National Archives Record Group 162, Entry 27.

Dennis, W. H. 1940 Asks Square Deal. The News and Courier, March 18: 4.

Doar, R. M. 1939 Another Santee Angle. The News and Courier, May 17: 4.

Dwight, Henry Ravenel 1939 Sees Only Grief for Berkeley in Santee-Cooper Development. The State, April 21: 5- B.

Fass, David 1938 Santee-Cooper Promise. The News and Courier, July 13: 4.

Fishburne, Anne W. 1939 Defends Swamp Area. The News and Courier, May 14: 4.

Fishburne, George R. 1934 Letter to South Carolina General Assembly, dated March 26. Box containing South Carolina Act 887/Ratified No. 1075. South Carolina Department of Archives and History. Columbia, SC.

Foreman, Clark 1939 Defends Santee Cooper. The News and Courier. October 19: 4.

Frain, J. G. 1942 Santee Criticism Criticized. The News and Courier. April 30: 4.

Frost, Susan Pringle 1939 Letter to Archibald Hamilton Rutledge, dated May 1. In Archibald Hamilton Rutledge papers (6301) at South Caroliniana Library Manuscript Division, Box 2, Folder 27. Columbia, SC.

Gerald, Charles 1939 Santee-Cooper Project Comes into Realization. The Charleston Evening Post and The News and Courier, Inaugural Edition. January 16: iv-8.

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Gilmore, M. E. 1941 Recovery of U. S. Was Aided by Santee, PWA Head Says. The News and Courier and The Charleston Evening Post, Power and Defense Edition. December 2: C-13.

Gourdin, William P. 1939 Santee Destruction. The News and Courier, May 4: 4.

Hammet, A. K. 1939 Political Project. The News and Courier, May 17: 4.

Hanahan, J. Ross 1941 Santee Seen as Vital to Defense. The News and Courier, August 30: 14.

Harley, J. Emile 1941 Advertising of State’s New Opportunities Seen as Leading to Better Defense Aid. The News and Courier and The Charleston Evening Post, Power and Defense Edition. December 2: C-12.

Hart, Sinclair 1941 Excerpt of letter written to the PWA that appeared in a press release from the Federal Works Agency, Public Works Administration, June 13, 1941 – Release No. 78, pages 1-2. National Archives Record Group 162, Entry 27.

Harza, L. F. 1941 Santee Project is Unusually Complex Job, Engineer Says. The News and Courier and The Charleston Evening Post, Power and Defense Edition. December 2: C-15.

Haws, S. N. 1939 Santee-Cooper’s Value. The News and Courier, May 15: 4.

Hutson, Elliott (Mrs.) c.1940 Letter to Marjorie Morawetz that was forwarded to James F. Byrnes. James F. Byrnes Collection. Box 55, Folder 1. Clemson University Library Special Collections. Clemson, SC.

Jacobs, William P. 1941 Santee Work Will Be Urged. The Charleston Evening Post, September 26: 1.

“James Islander” 1939 Opposes Project. The News and Courier, May 8: 4.

Jefferies, Richard Manning 1934 Letter to James F. Byrnes, dated January 5. James F. Byrnes Collection. Box 55, Folder 2. Clemson University Library Special Collections. Clemson, SC.

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Johnston, Olin D. 1938 Money Sure for Santee Power Work: Governor Pleased. The Charleston Evening Post, June 10: 1.

Kirk, Francis Marion 1939 Cooper-Santee Lands. The News and Courier, July 10: 4.

Kirk, Videau L. Beckwith 1940 Child of Politics. The News and Courier, March 8: 4.

Knudson, William 1941 Letter to John Carmody, Administrator of Federal Works Agency, dated January 27. In National Archives, Federal Works Agency files, record group 162, Entry 27.

Land Owners’ Association of the Santee-Cooper Basin 1939 Santee Cooper Landowners Refusing to Sell. The News and Courier, April 16: 12-II.

Lawrence, Frank E. 1939 If We Would Develop. The News and Courier, August 14: 4, 8.

Lucas, Florence LeNoble N.d.(c.1940) Letter to Emily G. Ravenel. In Ravenel Family Papers, Emily G. Ravenel papers. Call number 217.02.02, Folder 01. South Carolina Historical Society Archives, Charleston, SC.

Lucas, T. C. 1939 Disagrees with Writer. The News and Courier, May 14: 4.

Markwell, Kenneth 1938 Markwell, PWA Engineer, Talks on Santee-Cooper Project. The Berkeley Democrat, October 27: 2.

Maybank, Burnet R. 1941 Edition Fittingly Celebrates Beginning of Industrialization Period, Says Senator. The News and Courier and The Charleston Evening Post, Power and Defense Edition. December 2: C-12.

McDonald, Frederick H. 1941 Wide Awake Men Must Stir Drowsy South to Prosperity. The News and Courier and The Charleston Evening Post, Power and Defense Edition. December 2: A-6.

McMillan, John 1941 Santee’s Value Praised Highly. The News and Courier and The Charleston Evening Post, Power and Defense Edition. December 2: D-6.

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Morse, Stanley 1939 Why Rush Santee Project? The News and Courier, April 10: 4.

Nelson, W. G. 1941 Excerpt of letter written to the PWA that appeared in a press release from the Federal Works Agency, Public Works Administration, June 13, 1941 – Release No. 78, page 4. National Archives Record Group 162, Entry 27.

Newell, Norval N. 1939 Letter to the Editor. The News and Courier, October 10: 4.

Pearlstine, Milton A. 1933 Letter to James F. Byrnes, dated November 1. From James F. Byrnes Collection. Box 55, Folder 3. Clemson University Library Special Collections. Clemson, SC.

Poulnot, Edwin, Jr. 1939 Letter to Robert Manigault, dated June 1. From The News and Courier Papers. Call Number 23-377. Letters to William Watts Ball, 1939, from South Carolina Historical Society Archives, Charleston, SC.

“R. E.” 1938 Against Santee-Cooper. The News and Courier, July 28: 4.

Richardson, A. A. 1942 Report of A. A. Richardson Chief Game Warden of the State of South Carolina, Fiscal Year July 1, 1940 – June 30, 1941. In Reports and Resolutions of the General Assembly of South Carolina, 1942, vol. II. Printed under the direction of the Joint Committee on Printing General Assembly of South Carolina.

Roosevelt, Nicholas G. 1934 Letter to James Byrnes. James F. Byrnes Collection Box 55, Folder 3, Clemson University Special Collections. Clemson, SC

Rutledge, Archibald Hamilton 1939 Build a Power House. The News and Courier, April 29: 4.

“Santee” 1940 Who’ll Pay Damages? The News and Courier, March 18: 4.

Sloan, Alice Witte 1939 Loss of a Home. The News and Courier, April 11: 4.

Smith, Gennie Simons 1939 Plea for Justice. The News and Courier, May 16: 4.

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Smith, H. A. 1941 Erosion Control Urged for Santee. The News and Courier and The Charleston Evening Post, Power and Defense Edition. December 2: A-16.

Sosnowski, Sr., John F. 1939 Santee-Cooper Destruction. The News and Courier, April 24: 4.

Spectator 1941 Spectator Reviews Santee Cooper. The News and Courier. September 5:4.

1942 Test for Santee Octopus. The News and Courier, March 20: II-3.

Sprunt, Jr., Alexander 1939 Santee Lakes Good for Ducks? The News and Courier, September 27: 4.

“St. John” 1938 Santee Cooper. The News and Courier, August 2: 4.

Stanley, Victor Bland, Jr. 1935 Landmarks in Berkeley. The News and Courier, September 15: 4.

Sumter, John R. 1939 Would Halt an Attack. The News and Courier, April 6: 4.

Von Dohlen, J. Albert 1941 Santee’s Rebirth in 1933 Recalled. The News and Courier and The Charleston Evening Post, Power and Defense Edition. December 2: C-6.

Walsh, Joseph Norman 1934 Letter to Mary Presley Walsh Bullock, dated May 26. From the private collection of Mary Agnes Bullock Seabrook. Summerville, SC.

Waring, Thomas 1938 The Work Begins. The Charleston Evening Post. July 23: 4.

Whitsitt, J. M. 1933 Letter to Senator James F. Byrnes, dated November 9. James F. Byrnes Collection. Box 55, Folder 3. Clemson University Library Special Collections. Clemson, SC.

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Primary Sources

______c1936 History of Local Hospital Cited. The News and Courier, no date. Found in Anne Sinkler Fishburne’s family scrapbook. From private collection of Angie Whaley LeClerq.

Allen, Robert P. 1935 Audubon Association Opposes Cooper-Santee Power Project. Bird Lore 37(6): 443.

1939 No Sale on the Santee. Bird Lore 41(3): 174-175.

Ashmore, Harry 1939 Property Owners Persisting in Their Opposition to Santee. The News and Courier, October 1: 9.

Ayers, Arthur W. 1941 Moncks Corner Now Building Toward Optimistic Future. The News and Courier, December 2: 2-F.

Bartelme, Tony, and Ron Menchaca 2004a The Big Sell-Off. The Post and Courier, September 19: A-1, A-6, A-7.

2004b Conservation Groups Save Land Tracts When Possible. The Post and Courier, September 19: A-7.

Baskin, Lavinia 1958 History of Berkeley County Health Department leaflet. Moncks Corner, SC: Berkeley County Health Department. Located at Berkeley County Historical Society Museum.

Berkeley County Historical Society 1986 Cemetery Records: Lake Marion, Lake Moultrie. Moncks Corner, SC: Berkeley County Historical Society.

Berkeley Democrat 1939 Statistical Report: Berkeley County Health Department. Berkeley Democrat, April 27: 3.

Blizzard, A. W. c.1940 An Introduction to the Research and Investigation in Botany in Relation of Vegetation to Malarial Control. Moncks Corner, South Carolina: Health and Sanitation Division, South Carolina Public Service Authority. From Philip Gadsden Hasell Papers, Box 1, Folder 44. South Caroliniana Library Manuscript Division. Columbia, SC.

Carroll, J. W. (Mrs.) 1941 Camp Company Has Two S. C. Branches. The News and Courier, December 2: 3-F.

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Charleston Evening Post 1940 Control of Pellagra. Charleston Evening Post, December 9: A-4.

1941a Revenue Agents Make Seizure. Charleston Evening Post, May 8: A-9.

1941b Makes Arrest in Wilderness. Charleston Evening Post, June 12: A-10.

Collison, Earl M. 1941 Largest Defense Center in South. The News and Courier, December 2: B-2.

Commonwealth Asoociates, Inc. 1982 The Mattassee Lake Sites: Archaeological Investigations Along the Lower Santee River in the Coastal Plain of South Carolina. Report No. 2311 for The U. S. Department of the Interior. Jackson, Michigan: Commonwealth Associates, Inc.

Darling, J. N. 1939 Shadows along the Santee. Field and Stream. 44(1):5.

Dwight, Henry Ravenel N.d. c.1937?(a) Untitled paper. Project 1885. WPA Federal Writers Project, South Carolina. Cabinet H, Drawer 3, Folder 7. South Caroliniana Library. Columbia, SC.

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N.d. c.1937 (-c) Religious Institutions and Structures. WPA Federal Writers Project, South Carolina. Cabinet F, Drawer 2, Folder 28. South Caroliniana Library. Columbia, SC.

Environmental Protection Agency 2004 Consent Decree of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency Against the South Carolina Public Service Authority, March 16, 2004. Accessed on the internet at http://www.epa.gov/compliance/resources/decrees/civil/caa/santee-cd.pdf

Fishburne, Anne Sinkler 1969 Belvidere: A Plantation Memory. Charleston, SC: The R. L. Bryan Company.

Fishburne, William Kershaw c1937 Dr. Fishburne Decalres War Against Tin Cans. Berkeley Democrat. Found in Anne Sinkler Fishburne’s family scrapbook. From private collection of Angie Whaley LeClerq.

1939 Dr. Fishburne Files Report. Berkeley Democrat, July 20: 4.

347

Gaillard, Leize Palmer 1938 Springfield Plantation: Berkeley, South Carolina. Columbia, SC: The R. L. Bryan Company.

Fretwell, Sammy 2006 Groups Sue to Stop Clyburn’s Bridge. The State, September 13: A-1.

Hasell, Philip Gadsden 1939 Letter to A. A. Weathersbee, dated February 16, 1939. From Philip Gadsden Hasell Papers, Box 1, Folder 1. South Caroliniana Library Manuscript Division.

1940 Progress Report of Philip G. Hasell. February 14-27, 1940. From Philip Gadsden Hasell Papers, Box 1, Folder 32. South Caroliniana Library Manuscript Division.

1941 Report of Sanitary Engineer’s Activities, 1939 - June 30, 1940. From Philip Gadsden Hasell Papers, Box 1, Folder 38. South Caroliniana Library Manuscript Division.

Health and Sanitation Division 1939 Progress Report of Malaria Control, July 15 through July 31, 1939. From Philip Gadsden Hasell Papers, Box 1, Folder 31. South Caroliniana Library Manuscript Division. Columbia, SC.

Hoffman, Frederick L. 1933 Malaria in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Newark, NJ: Prudential Press.

Irving, John B. 1932 (1969) A Day on Cooper River. 3rd Edition. Columbia, SC: The R. L. Bryan Company.

Kauffman, Erle 1939 Conservation over the Dam. American Forests: The Magazine of the American Forestry Association. October and November.

Kirk, Francis Marion 1938 Long Fear of River Ends with Santee. The News and Courier, August 14: III-2.

1940 Jonquil Farm, Priced at $99 for Santee, Earned $312. The News and Courier, April 8: 7.

McNeely, Robert W. 1939 The Santee-Cooper Area. The News and Courier, October 1: III-2.

Moore, J. H. 1941 Santee Curbed During Flood that Imperiled Work at Dam. The News and Courier, December 2: A-12.

348

Moser, Ada M. 1939 Farm Family Diets in the Lower Coastal Plain of South Carolina. Bulletin 319. Columbia, SC: South Carolina Experiment Station. Located at South Caroliniana Library.

National Emergency Council to President Roosevelt 1938 A Study of Economic Conditions in the South: Section Five: Private and Public Income. Berkeley Democrat, October 6: 3.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 2004 Costliest U. S. Hurricanes, Adjusted. Accessed on the internet at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastcost2.shtml on November 15, 2006.

1996 AVHRR Map, Satellite Image of South Carolina dated January 4. . Accessed on the internet at http://sd-www.jhuapl.edu/states/avhrr/SC_213.n14.96jan04_1828.html on December 14, 2006.

Newell, Mrs. N. N. 1941 Moncks Corner Booming, Population Doubled. The State, December 7: III-2.

News and Courier, The 1926 Murder and Mayhem in Moncks Corner. The News and Courier, May 5: 1.

1938a No Town Doomed by Santee-Cooper. The News and Courier, May 28: 12.

1938b Lost in Swamp, Is Safe. The News and Courier, September 27:4.

1938c One More Year of Santee Crops. The News and Courier, December 16: II-9.

1939a Do You Know Your Lowcountry? Francis Marion National Forest. The News and Courier, February 20: 10.

1939b Berkeley Moonshiners Busy as Ever, Not as Prosperous, May 13: 2.

1939c $1,071,000 is Paid to N. Y. Company by Santee Group, October 10: 1.

1940a Santee Jobs Distribution Shown by Counties. The News and Courier, March 10: 16.

1940b State Land Act Upheld by Court. The News and Courier, March 13, 1940: 14.

1940c Old Folks Residing in Santee Basins. The News and Courier, March 16: 2.

1940d 2 Berkeley Land Cases Appealed. The News and Courier, April 19: 4.

1940e Pinopolis Works Shown in Model. The News and Courier, April 19: 5.

349

News and Courier, The 1940f Santee Soon to Flood Site of Legendary Pirate Gold. The News and Courier, July 15: 10.

1940g S. C. Per Capita Income Put at $268 – 4th From Bottom. The News and Courier, October 17: 1.

1941a Populations of Counties, Cities, and Towns. The News and Courier, January 7: 12.

1941b Defense Rating Given to Santee to Avoid Delay. The News and Courier, February 4: 1-2.

1941c Santee Folk to Get Land in Richland. The News and Courier, July 14: 10.

1941d Hanover Plantation Home, Built in 1716, to Be Safe in Hills from Santee Flood. The News and Courier, August 14: 12.

1941e Some Owners Move Homes from Santee Basin Lands. The News and Courier, August 16: 12.

1941f S. C. Diseases Increase. The News and Courier, August 16: 12.

1941g Gippy Dairy Burns, Loss at $50,000. The News and Courier, October 23: 1.

1941h WPA Nearing End of Clearing Work. The News and Courier, November 2: 14.

1941i Dam Closure Under Way for Santee. The News and Courier, November 6: 1.

1941j Santee Closure Work Completed. The News and Courier, November 14: 1.

1941k Santee Housing Head Appointed. The News and Courier, November 20: 12.

1941l Jones’s Lumber Sold in this Area. The News and Courier, December 2: 2-F.

1941m Berkeley County Well Served by Merchants and Other Businesses. The News and Courier, December 2: 3-F.

1941n Mercantile Store Started in 1911. The News and Courier, December 2: 4-F.

1941o Berkeley County Town with Lumber as Chief Industry Has Enjoyed Steady Growth. The News and Courier, December 2: 4-F.

1941p Average Cost of Current. The News and Courier, December 2: 11-F.

1941q Rural Power Gain Sought in Santee. The News and Courier, December 2: 15-F.

350

News and Courier, The 1941r Santee Area Statistics. The News and Courier, December 2: G-11.

1941s Basin Areas Give Wooded Treasure. The News and Courier, December 2: A-2.

1941t Trailer Home Trend Helped by Influx of Santee Labor. The News and Courier, December 2: A-7.

1941u The Bones of a Prehistoric Mammal (picture caption). The News and Courier, December 2: A-10.

1941v U. S. and State Are at Work on Santee Refuge Program. The News and Courier, December 2: A-13.

1941w Safety Program Given Emphasis. The News and Courier, December 2: A-14.

1941x Certified Relief Workers Given Chance for Responsible Jobs in Basin Area. The News and Courier, December 2: A-14.

1941y Unusual Problems Presented Engineers in Building Santee. The News and Courier, December 2: B-12.

1941z Contractors Pay $8,321,702. The News and Courier,December 2: B-15.

1941aa Pittsburgh Company First to Put Ferro-Alloy Mill at a Seaport. The News and Courier, December 2: E-10.

1983 2,000 Residents Evacuate. The News and Courier, July 7: 1,2.

Orvin, Maxwell Clayton 1950 Monck’s Corner: Berkeley County, South Carolina. Moncks Corner, SC: M. C. Orvin.

Poe, Harry T., Jr. 1939 Map Collection from Scrapbook. In Poe Family Papers. Mss 242, Box 4. Clemson University Library Special Collections, Clemson, SC.

Quattlebaum, Paul 1941 Santee Work Makes Dream of T. C. Williams a Reality. The News and Courier, December 2: C-12.

Rice, Earle Milford 1940a Progress Report: February 1 through February 15, 1940. From Philip Gadsden Hasell Papers, Box 1, Folder 32. South Caroliniana Library Manuscript Division. Columbia, SC.

351

1940b Progress Report: July 1 through July 15, 1940. From Philip Gadsden Hasell Papers, Box 1, Folder 34. South Caroliniana Library Manuscript Division. Columbia, SC.

1940c Progress Report: December 1-December 15, 1940. From Philip Gadsden Hasell Papers, Box 1, Folder 35. South Caroliniana Library Manuscript Division. Columbia, SC.

Rutledge, Archibald Hamilton 1942 Letters to Santee Cooper. In the Archibald Hamilton Rutledge Papers. Santee Cooper Archives. Moncks Corner, South Carolina.

1956 Santee Paradise. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc.

Sass, Herbert Ravenel 1931 The Low-Country. In The Carolina Low-Country. New York: McMillan.

Santee Cooper 1983 Information Bulletin: Steel-Reinforced Concrete Cap to Be Used for Permanent Fix of Santee Cooper Dam. July 13. Santee Cooper Archives, Box 40, Folder “Dam Leak.” Moncks Corner, SC.

1984 Annual Report. Fifty Years Improving the Quality of Life in South Carolina. Moncks Corner, SC: Santee Cooper.

2006 FERC Relicensing. Santee Cooper Environment Division. Accessed on the internet at http://www.santeecooper.com/Environment

South Carolina Public Service Authority 1946 Eleventh Annual Report of the Board of Directors of the South Carolina Public Service Authority to the Advisory Board and Audit Report of the Santee-Cooper Project, July 1 1945-June 30 1945. Moncks Corner, SC: South Carolina Public Service Authority.

1950 Picture Progress Story. Moncks Corner, SC: South Carolina Public Service Authority.

South Carolina State Planning Board 1940 Aluminum from Santee Cooper Power. Pamphlet No. 3. South Carolina State Planning Board. Columbia, South Carolina.

State, The 1941 901 Families Moved from Basins to Safety, Former Foes Said to Be Friends Now. The State, December 14: II-16.

Surles, Flora B. 1938 Last in the Santee. The News and Courier, August 14: III-2.

352

Taber, Stephen 1939 Report to the South Carolina Public Service Authority on the Geology of the Santee- Cooper Project. Columbia? SC: South Carolina Public Service Authority.

United States Public Health Service 1953 Vital Statistics of the United States, 1950. Volume 3: Mortality Data. Washington, DC: United States Public Health Service.

Valentine, W. J. 1941 Industrial ‘Pull’ Here is Analyzed. The News and Courier, December 2: 13-F.

Want, Leroy 1939 Historic Connor Place Near Eutawville, settled as a Result of Lowland Floods, to Be Bought by State for River Diversion. The News and Courier, July 5: 10.

1940 First Rehousing Case Completed in Santee Basin. The News and Courier, February 20: 1.

1941a Santee Cooper Is Playing Important Part in Economic Life of Nation. The News and Courier, December 2: G-1.

1941b Flag Raising and Powerhouse Inspection Signalize Power-Defense Edition. The News and Courier, December 3: 1.

1941c Communities Relocated Outside of Doomed Areas. The News and Courier, June 23: 10.

Waterman, Thomas T. 1939 A Survey of the Early Buildings in the Region of the Proposed Santee and Pinopolis Reservoirs in South Carolina. Washington, DC: National Park Service.

White, Warren T. 1941 State’s Coastal Plain Is Booming. The News and Courier, December 2: G-13.

Work Projects Administration 1940 Specifications for Clearing by the Work Projects Administration, Santee and Pinopolis Basins and Appurtenant Work. South Carolina Public Service Authority Santee-Cooper Power and Navigation Project Docket No. 4329-PR. From Philip Gadsden Hasell Papers, Box 1, Folder 38. South Caroliniana Library Manuscript Division.

1941 Palmetto Place Names. Compiled by Workers of the Writers’ Program of the Work Projects Administration. Columbia, SC: The South Carolina Educational Association.

1941(1988) South Carolina: The WPA Guide to the Palmetto State. 2nd edition. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.

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