Upper South

The Old Ninety Six District

backcountry crowns and kilns

Open the interactive map →

Drive

Augusta → Abbeville

Distance

~100 miles

Time

1 days

Highways

US 25 · SC 34 · SC 72

Avoids

I-20

Region

Upper South

The South Carolina backcountry ran on Edgefield stoneware and hard politics: the district produced ten governors, and its enslaved potter David Drake signed and versed his great jars in open defiance of literacy law; the Met owns his work now. Up the road, Ninety Six preserves the Revolution's 28-day southern siege and its star fort, and Abbeville holds both ends of the Confederacy: a launch meeting in 1860 and Jefferson Davis's last war council in 1865. The square calls itself the birthplace and the deathbed, and has the buildings for it.

📍 Rev War backcountry markers cluster at Ninety Six; Edgefield's pottery story is told at the discovery center.

The drive, segment by segment

Edgefield Pottery

Augusta → Edgefield · ~25 mi

Over the Savannah into the old district's kiln country and courthouse square.

• 🏛️Old Edgefield Pottery — Edgefield

  The alkaline-glazed stoneware tradition, and David Drake, enslaved and defiantly literate, whose signed, versed jars now stand in the Met.

• 🏘️Edgefield's ten governors — Edgefield

  One small courthouse town produced ten South Carolina governors, a statistic the square commemorates with busts and no false modesty.

The Star Fort

Edgefield → Ninety Six · ~45 mi

Greenwood's wide Main Street, then the siege lines and reconstructed stockade.

• 🏘️Greenwood's Main Street — Greenwood

  A railroad-era Main Street that claims a place among the widest in the world; the emerald-city branding leans in.

• 🛡️Ninety Six NHS — Ninety Six

  Greene's 28-day 1781 siege against the loyalist star fort, the earthworks still crisp; the walking loop reads the whole chess match.

The Deathbed

Ninety Six → Abbeville · ~30 mi

West to the opera-house square and the mansion where the Confederacy's books closed.

• 🏛️Burt-Stark Mansion — Abbeville

  Jefferson Davis held his final council of war here on May 2, 1865, and was told it was over; the house keeps the room as the argument left it.

• 🏘️Abbeville Square — Abbeville

  A gaslit square with a working 1908 opera house; the town's 'birthplace and deathbed of the Confederacy' tagline is local, and the architecture backs the drama.

Worth a detour

• Redcliffe Plantation — James Henry Hammond's Beech Island estate, the 'Cotton is King' senator; the site tells the enslaved Henley and Goodwin families' story with equal weight.
• Hickory Knob State Resort Park — Lodge, cabins and golf on Thurmond Lake, the practical overnight for the district.