The Landsford canal in Chester and Lancaster Counties was a dam partially across the Catawba River and Five Locks designed by Robert Mills in 1820. I approach by I-77 North from Columbia, exit for Fort Lawn (a woman I met named Fannie Fort told me that there was not a fort there, there was the lawn of a family named Fort), take 21 towards Rock Hill for about 8 miles. This is still the real country. We used to drive this way from Rock Hill to "down home" on Sundays to visit Mama and Papa and many aunts, uncles and cousins out in the country at Pleasant Plain. I looked for the old store along the way owned by a man who introduced by mother and father, but it is gone or the kudzu has covered it up. The road has not changed much, there are some farm houses surrounded by pecan trees and huge magnolias, their size testifying to the age of the homes. Near Mineral Springs road, a sign declares "Deer Skinning $20.00". On the road side, there is purple vetch and miriad yellow flowers. Another sign proclaims "Home grown greens and oats". A large brown State Park sign points down the road to the canal and it comes up in a few miles. There is no one at the park, except a ranger I call down from his second floor office.
He tells me he likes it this way, that it has rained all night and more rain is coming. That is why no one is there. There are restrooms, picnic tables, a children's play ground, a meeting house made of stone. And there is a 1.5 mile trail along the river. The forrest is wet and fragrant. Many blue spiderworts are strewn beside the path. After 3/4 mile you come upon a a wooden platform for viewing the Rocky Shoal Spider Lilies (Hymenocallis coronaria). The sight is astounding. The wide, wide Catawba is a kind of Garden of Eden. As far as you can see in either direction, the river is full of blooming white lilies (they are also called the Fall Line Cahaba Lilly). They grow only in South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. Since dams have been built on the rivers, they have begun to lose their habitats. Their roots require the craggy rocks on the bottom of the rivers and some of this is gone now. If you go farther down the trail, you will pass through part of an old stone mill owned by William Richardson Davie where they cut lumber and milled grain. At the far end of the trail, there is a large part of one of the old locks and a sign which tells you that you are on the "Great Indian Warrior Trading Path". This path stretched from the Great Lakes to Augusta Georgia and part of it includes the Nation's Ford of the Catawba near Rock Hill (up river about 13 miles). There was a ford here as well and when the water is low, it is possible to walk across this very wide river.
The rangers used to take people, but now if you want to walk across, you must try to find out from Duke Power Company at what hours, the depth of the river will allow you to cross. And you are on your own.
I drive away toward Rock Hill in a downpour thinking of the Native Americans who were stewards of this paradise and how they lost their lands, their hunting grounds, their medicine and philosophy, their very culture, their language and their religion and of the transgenerational trauma which follows them.
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