SC Picture Project

The purpose of the South Carolina Picture Project is to celebrate the beauty of the Palmetto State while preserving some of its vanishing landscapes.

Pinopolis, South Carolina

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Pinopolis, a pineland village in Berkeley County named for its prevalence of long leaf pines (Pinus palustris), was established as a plantation retreat community as early as 1834 when Dr. Morton Waring and Frederick Porcher built the first homes in the hamlet. A “sickly season” had caused widespread illness in the nearby retreat village of Pineville that same year, causing residents to relocate to nearby Pinopolis in order to escape the mosquitoes of the low-lying plantations during the summer.

While most of the remaining homes in Pineville were burned during the Civil War, Pinopolis was spared such devastation. When the Santee River was dammed in 1939 for the creation of the Santee Cooper hydroelectric power project, many of the plantations and surrounding homes and churches near Pinopolis were submerged in what is now Lake Moultrie. Today Pinopolis is a peninsula on the lake.

Map of Pinopolis Landmarks

Explore Pinopolis