The story
Dorchester is the deep time entry in this atlas: founded in 1697 by Massachusetts Congregationalists on the Ashley River, it spent nearly a century as a trading town of wharves, a great brick church, and a tabby-walled powder fort. The oldest ghost towns aren't in the West.
Malaria pushed its founders' descendants to healthier land in Georgia in the 1750s, and the Revolution — occupations, skirmishes, and Greene's 1781 push that drove the British out — finished the decline; by 1788 it was described as abandoned. St. George's bell tower and the remarkably intact tabby fort survive in a state historic site where archaeology is continuous.
What remains today
The 1751 bell tower of St. George's, the tabby Fort Dorchester, wharf traces, and active dig sites, interpreted along the Ashley.
From the archives
Middleton Place, Ashley River vic., Dorchester County, South Carolina
Middleton Place, Ashley River vic., Dorchester County, South Carolina
Middleton Place, Ashley River vic., Dorchester County, South Carolina
Middleton Place, Ashley River vic., Dorchester County, South Carolina
Source: Library of Congress digital collections.
Questions from the field
- How old is Dorchester?
- Founded 1697 — abandoned before the Constitution was ratified. Its tabby fort is among the best-preserved colonial fortifications in the country.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Dorchester — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
Add photographs
Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Dorchester's permanent record.
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Primary sources for this record
- — USGS GNIS feature 1241079
- — SC State Parks — Colonial Dorchester SHS
- — Colonial-era parish records