“S” is for Sumter National Forest. Named for Thomas Sumter, famed partisan of the American Revolution, Sumter National Forest encompasses over 350,000 acres in the Piedmont and mountains of South Carolina. The forest is divided into three ranger districts spread across eleven counties. In July 1936 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a proclamation establishing the Sumter National Forest, much of it on infertile red hills that had eroded and exhausted from decades of intensive cotton cultivation. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was employed to terrace hillsides and plant trees. By the onset of World War II, the CCC had accomplished much of the spade work needed to bring the forest back into productivity. Reflecting a Forest Service wide shift in policy, in the 1960s Sumter National Forest moved from managing the forest solely for timber to multiple uses including outdoor recreation and wilderness.
"S” is for Sumter National Forest
