How this is organized

Every page here is built from a small set of things and the ties between them.

Markers

A marker is the record the South Carolina Department of Archives and History keeps for it: its number, the text on both sides, where it stands, who erected it and the year it was approved. The number's first two digits are the county, in alphabetical order. Where the department reports a marker missing, its page says so, and no drive goes there.

Civil War and Revolutionary War battlefields come from the National Park Service's American Battlefield Protection Program, and historic sites from South Carolina State Parks.

Counties

A marker's county is the county its map point falls in.

Eras

Each marker's era is the time period the department files it under.

• Colonial (pre-contact to 1763)
• Era of American Revolution (1764-1783)
• South Carolina in the Early Republic (1784-1815)
• Antebellum (1816-1860)
• Civil War (1861-1865)
• Reconstruction (1866-1876)
• New South (1877-1913)
• World War I and the Interwar Period (1913-1941)
• World War II and After (1941-present)

Themes

Each marker's themes come from the department's own keywords, grouped into the themes below.

• African American history. Slavery and freedom, Black schools, churches and towns, Reconstruction, and the civil rights movement.
• The Civil War. Battles, raids, regiments, hospitals, prisons and the people of the war, 1861-1865.
• The Revolution. Battles, camps, congresses and the people of the war for independence, 1775-1783.
• Native nations. The Catawba, Cherokee, Yamasee and the other nations of South Carolina.
• Women's history. Women who led, wrote, taught, founded and voted, and the schools and causes they built.
• Faith and congregations. Churches, meeting houses, missions and the people who led them.
• Cemeteries. Churchyards, family burying grounds and the graves of people the state remembers.
• Schools and colleges. Academies, colleges, universities and schoolhouses, and the teachers who founded them.
• Government and law. Governors, legislators, judges, courthouses, conventions and constitutions.
• Work and industry. Mills, mines, furnaces, farms, fisheries, factories and the people who built them.
• Roads, rivers and rails. Trading paths, wagon roads, ferries, canals, railroads, ports and lighthouses.
• Forts and the armed forces. Forts, camps and bases, and South Carolinians in the wars from 1812 to Vietnam.
• Writers, artists and musicians. Novelists, poets, journalists, painters, architects and musicians.
• Medicine and science. Physicians, hospitals, naturalists, engineers and scientists.
• Exploration and settlement. Explorers, land grants and boundary lines, and where towns, counties, inns and resorts began.
• Homes and landmarks. Houses, birthplaces and buildings on the National Register.
• Sport and recreation. Ballfields, resorts, parks and the places South Carolina played.

People and quotations

Where a marker is about someone in Carolina Quotes, its page links to them and quotes them.

Photographs

A page shows a photograph of the marker where one has been released to the public domain, otherwise a public domain portrait of the person it is about, otherwise a Library of Congress photograph from its county. Each one carries its source and rights.

Drives

Drive times come from OpenStreetMap roads at posted speeds, ferries included. Each loop is solved for the shortest route and checked against a lower bound, so the map can say how close to the shortest possible loop it is.