Yemassee, SC

Yemassee is a Lowcountry town split by the Hampton-Beaufort county line and laid out along the CSX railroad. The town grew from the Port Royal-Augusta Railroad hamlet formed in the 1860s on lands of Richfield Plantation and the Cuthbert family; a post office followed in 1868. The older name reaches further back: Pocotaligo, now part of Yemassee, was one of the Yamasee people's major centers and the site of the first attack that began the Yamasee War in 1715. The town's name keeps that history on the present-day map.

Today, Yemassee is a working rail crossroads at the edge of the Lowcountry. Amtrak stops at the town's station, I-95 and Highway 68 carry traffic through, and Alpha Genesis operates a commercial primate breeding facility that is one of the town's major employers. The area also carries Civil War traces: Sherman's army passed through, and a Presbyterian church survived after being used as a Union hospital. Yemassee is the kind of place where railroad tracks, county lines, old plantations, a train platform, and deep coastal history all share the same few miles.