As I was looking at a map I saw a town called Ninety Six. Just the fact that a town had a number as a name made it noteworthy. But I had this thought in the back of my mind that there was more to the town. Maybe a revolutionary Star Fort?
As I recall, William Least Heat Moon noted in his book Blue Highways, that he stopped in Ninety Six and visited the revolutionary era fort there. The locals had realized that maintaining the historic site was a bigger task than they could handle and had transferred the responsibility of the site to the National Park Service.
At the time in the late 1970’s when he had visited not much had been done to the site. The ranger on site said that the Park Service had big plans. First, most of the hunting and partying that had been allowed on the land had to stop. Then they planned on restoring nearby sites, building a visitors center and putting a paved path. The ranger lamented that the paved path would allow “high-heeled ladies and overweight men” to walk in, snap a few pictures and move on with out understanding what they had seen.
By the time we visited in 2019, all of the planned things had been done. There was even automatic gate that closed at 4:30 pm. We arrived about 3 pm and worried it might trap us in. Of course if we were trapped in we would have no choice but to sleep there for the night. Thinking we wanted to get closer to Greensville by the end of the day, we did not want to gated in and parked just outside the gate.
We walked up to the visitors center, hoping for some personal insight about the park and found this.
It was Monday and they were closed. I guess this is one of the less visited parks so we should have called ahead.
Still that 1 mile long paved trail had been installed with numerous signs so we could wander though the location of old town, original wooden fort and earthen Star Fort. Mrs Ram did not wear heels but we are both overweight so one of the rangers fears was realized with our visit.
The Star Fort was built in 1780 by loyalist to defend the town from the rebels (known to us as patriots). The simple earthen walls formed in star shaped provided ample defense against the patriots assaults.
The patriots did manage to breach the wooden fort on the other end of town but were not able to hold it.
Being a good Patriot’s fan Mr Ram took aim at the fort as well.
The patriots gave up when the loyalists were reinforced.
Shortly after the loyalist win, the British decided holding the area was not critical anymore. They abandoned and burned the town. The original Ninety Six, presumably named because it was 96 miles from the the Cherokee village of Keowee, was gone.
As we headed back to the parking lot we saw the gates to the parking lot were closed. However we should not have feared. The gates were set up to open automatically as we saw someone leave as we sat in our van.
We headed north toward the “new” Ninety Six. The “new” Ninety Six looks like many other small towns located next to train tracks. We stopped at the Subway there for a quick supper and headed on towards a welcoming Walmart in Greenville.
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A note for fans of the Blue Highways book. I found a website with a map and links of his journey here.
I also found an old blog with some additional thoughts on Ninety Six and the Star Fort