Congaree
National Park
About Congaree
Visited – October 2019 (#17 of 63)
Established (as NP) November 2003
22K acres (about 1% the size of Yellowstone)
Where is Congaree: Right in the middle of South Carolina, about 20 miles southeast of Columbia.
Recommendations
Don’t miss: Start at the Harry Hamption Visitor Center where you can learn all about the trees and floodplain forest (swamp). There are nice boardwalks of varying lengths that take you by all the varieties of trees.
When to visit: We visited in October and it was not horrible. The light rain kept the mosquitos at bay and the temps were pleasant. So we vote for October or November.
How long to stay: You can do this park in a day. It might be fun to add a second day if you want to canoe/kayak the river to view the park from a different perspective.
Check out the Photo Gallery of our best pictures.
Photo Gallery
Congaree really does have some cool trees. We only took a day to tour this park, but it was a fun visit. Both the live trees and the dead/decaying ones were interesting. Take a look at the variation we captured on our visit.
Link to NPS Info
Click to visit the park’s website with maps, history, and lots of great info on things to do and places to see.
Trip Report
Read about our adventures to Congaree…
Technically it’s not a swamp, but it’s hard not to look at it that way. We didn’t see any snakes and not many mosquitos either as it was a little drizzly. That made it a remarkably pleasant walk through the “swamp” and it has a great, educational Visitor Center.
Congaree Blog Posts
Congaree Trip Report
We had never heard of Congaree until we began our quest. And when we first learned about the park, we were skeptical of how a swamp in the middle of the humid southeastern US would be worthy of being a National Park. Well, at the end of the day, we’re good with...