Audio Tour Added to Learning Lineup at Charles Towne Landing

CHARLESTON, SC – Take a South Carolina vacation and visit our newly renovated Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site and hear history come alive as well as see it.

The South Carolina park has installed an audio tour system on its history trail to help visitors better understand the 665-acre site where the first permanent European settlement in South Carolina was established in 1670 on a secluded, marshy point just off what is now the Ashley River.

The mile-and-a-half trail goes from the new visitor’s center to Albemarle Point on Old Town Creek and past the Legare-Waring House, the home of Ferdinanda Legare-Waring, the pioneering horticulturist and preservationist who sold the property to the state to create the park that opened in 1970 to mark South Carolina’s tercentennial.

There now are 22 marked stops along the South Carolina trail where visitors who rent the MP3 players can hear detailed accounts of what they’re seeing, such as archaeological digs, reconstructed palisade walls, full-size, working replica cannons, a trial crop garden and the sailing ship Adventure.

The audio players rent for $5 and are available during regular park hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. The recordings total about 90 minutes and the tour generally takes about an hour and a half.

Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site is undergoing a $19 million renovation also highlighted by a 12-room museum inside the visitors center that tells how the settlers, their slaves and servants and local Native Americans came together to create a community that would become a major port city and the birthplace of the plantation system of the American South.

The South Carolina park also includes Animal Forest, a naturalistic zoo that’s home to animals the settlers would have encountered, including bears, otters, pumas and bison.

Programs that include cannon and musket firings and other living history demonstrations are regularly scheduled. The park’s entire program lineup can be seen on the State Park Service Web site at www.SouthCarolinaParks.com. The audio recordings from the history trail also can be heard there.