Gardens Interchange? Gateway to Combahee Ferry Historic District??
US-17, Gardens Corner, Beaufort County, SC – June 26, 2010
US-17 widening: 8 miles, $80 million
These images show the southwestern terminus of the highway widening project. The northeastern terminus, a bridge over the Combahee River, is a fascinating footnote to the project. This article in The State by Wayne Washington, published nearly five years ago, details a historical find during environmental screening before construction: a ferry used by Harriet Tubman in 1863 to lead a force that freed 700 slaves.
This site is near the geographic center and bottleneck of the Gullah-Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, a program of the National Park Service. (Learn more here.) This is a great opportunity to erect interpretive information and raise awareness of the corridor and its significance. The location has been the foot of a Combahee River bridge for a long time; remnants of a suspected pontoon bridge and Confederate earthworks also exist here. SC DOT’s proposal to acknowledge this history appears here on its website.
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