Camden: South Carolina's Oldest Inland City

Camden is the oldest inland city in South Carolina, settled around seventeen thirty-three along the Wateree River as a trading post called Pine Tree Hill. Later the town was renamed Camden in honor of Lord Camden, a British parliamentarian who had championed colonial rights. When the Revolutionary War reached South Carolina, Camden became the principal British inland base for eleven months after Lord Cornwallis occupied it in June of seventeen eighty.

Two major battles were fought nearby: the Battle of Camden in August seventeen eighty, and the Battle of Hobkirk's Hill the following April. Today the Historic Camden site preserves reconstructed fortifications and buildings from that occupation, making Camden one of the best-interpreted Revolutionary War landscapes in the South.