Hopkins, SC

Hopkins is a Richland County CDP southeast of Columbia, but the giant thing on its doorstep is Congaree National Park. The community was founded around 1836 and named for John Hopkins; today residents are close to the park's boardwalks, floodplain forest, and Congaree River landscape. Congaree preserves one of the largest remaining old-growth bottomland hardwood forests in the country, and its story includes Native use, enslaved people who escaped through the swamp, logging, and the long campaign that made the area a national park. Richland County schools serve local students. Hopkins is a place where a rural crossroads sits beside a national-scale forest.