High Hills of Santee

It extends north almost to the Kershaw county line and northeasterly to include the former summer resort town of Bradford Springs.

[3] In the 18th and 19th centuries, the High Hills of Santee was the location of many cotton plantations, and had a large population of enslaved Africans as laborers.

Among the planter families were The Broughtons, The Dinkins, Richardsons, and the Singletons, whose daughter Angelica married Abraham Van Buren eldest son of Martin Van Buren and served as First Lady of the United States after his election as a widower president following the second term of President Andrew Jackson.

[4] The South Carolina historian David Duncan Wallace placed the area in what he called the "red hill region" of the state.

Despite the short distances to Columbia and Sumter, the High Hills of Santee are relatively rural and isolated, as the area was in antebellum times.

An antebellum branch of the former South Carolina Railroad ran from Wateree east across the river to Wateree Junction and then north on the west of Kings Highway through Middleton, Foxville, Dixie Crossing, the former Stateburg Station on Garner's Ferry Road, Claremont, Horatio, Hagood and then into Kershaw County.

In April 1865 General Edward E. Potter and his Union Army troops "discovered nine locomotives and approximately 200 cars from the rolling stock of the Wilmington & Manchester and South Carolina Railroads.

Another runs southwest to Pinewood and across the Upper Santee River" connecting Remini and Low Falls, SC across the Lake Marion now flooded swamp called Sparkleberry to Calhoun County.