South Carolina has been collecting admirers since before it was one of the original thirteen colonies. Its small towns run on river waterfronts, horse country, and mountain trails. Beaufort sends its oak-lined streets to the water while Walhalla backs up against the Blue Ridge. In between sit antebellum squares and rice-port boardwalks. These eleven keep landing on the country’s favorite small-town lists, and a visit to South Carolina shows why.

Beaufort

Beaufort’s most famous house belonged to a man born enslaved inside it. Robert Smalls commandeered a Confederate steamer to freedom during the Civil War, served five terms in Congress, and came back to buy the 1834 house where he had once been held. The town wears its history easily, with oak-canopied streets running down to the water and antebellum homes like Tidalholm, built before the war for cotton merchant Edgar Fripp. Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park, with its bench swings and marina views, is the place to start. Beaufort has also stood in for the movies more than once, including The Big Chill, which drew three Academy Award nominations. Minutes from downtown, Hunting Island State Park keeps miles of undeveloped beach and maritime forest.

Aiken

In Aiken, the horses run the town. The city grew into a winter colony for Northern horse trainers more than a century ago, and the equestrian culture never left. Hitchcock Woods, one of the largest urban forests in the country at more than 2,000 acres, gives riders and walkers a quiet stretch right in town. Hopelands Gardens adds koi ponds and fountains under old oaks, and the Aiken Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame and Museum sits in a former stable on the grounds, tracing the champions trained here. Time a visit to the spring steeplechase and the whole town turns out for it.

Bluffton

Bluffton still shucks its oysters by hand. The Bluffton Oyster Company, working since the early 1900s, is the last hand-shucking oyster house left in the state, and it sits right on the May River that the town is built around. Up on the bluff, the Church of the Cross has overlooked the water since the 1850s, built of heart pine with rose-colored English glass. Start at the Heyward House, an 1840s cottage that doubles as the welcome center and hands out walking maps of Old Town. The art scene fills in the rest, with galleries like Four Corners Fine Art selling local work a short walk from the docks.

Cheraw

Cheraw raised Dizzy Gillespie, and a bronze statue of the jazz trumpeter stands on the town green to prove it. The rest of the place earns its nickname, the Prettiest Town in Dixie, with antebellum and Victorian houses lining moss-draped streets that bloom with azaleas each spring. Old St. David’s Church, built between 1770 and 1772, saw use by both British and American troops in the Revolution. The Cheraw Lyceum Museum lays out the local history in a Greek Revival building on the green. Just outside town, Cheraw State Park, one of the oldest in the state, opens onto Lake Juniper for paddling and a swim.

Georgetown

Georgetown keeps one of the oldest American-built wooden boats ever recovered. The Brown’s Ferry Vessel, a freight boat built in the early 1700s, sits in the Maritime Museum gallery in the old Kaminski Hardware Building. Next door, the Rice Museum tells how Carolina Gold rice made this the largest rice producer in the nation, the third-oldest city in South Carolina. Front Street runs a mile-long boardwalk along the Sampit River, lined with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century storefronts and some of the best antiquing in the state. Out of town, Hobcaw Barony preserves 17,500 acres once owned by financier Bernard Baruch, open by guided tour.

Camden

Camden is the oldest inland town in South Carolina, and the Revolution is still in the ground here. The Historic Camden Revolutionary War Site marks the 1780 Battle of Camden, one of the worst American defeats and one of the biggest British wins in the Southern campaign. The town turned its other obsession into a calendar fixture with the Carolina Cup steeplechase at Springdale Racecourse, run every spring since 1930 and drawing tens of thousands. Goodale State Park puts old-growth trees and Spanish moss minutes from downtown. The Art Center of Kershaw County keeps a schedule of exhibits and performances year-round.

Conway

Conway is one of the oldest towns in the state, and its brick-lined downtown sits under moss-draped cypress along the Waccamaw River. The town has built a reputation lately for going all out at Halloween, with costume contests and a golf-cart parade that runs alongside the Coastal Carolina University homecoming each October. The Conway Riverwalk follows the river past interpretive markers and quiet benches. The Horry County Museum runs a crash course in local history, with permanent exhibits on Native American culture, the Civil War, and the tobacco era that built the region. Riverfront Park adds an easy walk along the water.

Newberry

Newberry’s skyline still belongs to its opera house. Built in the 1880s and crowned by a French Gothic clock tower, the restored Newberry Opera House seats a few hundred and keeps a full calendar of concerts, plays, and touring acts. A short walk away, the Wells Japanese Garden hides two restored ponds, a torii gate, and Japanese bridges on the National Register of Historic Places, free to enter. Newberry College, which predates the Civil War, lends its stone architecture to the town center. The nearby Sumter National Forest keeps the trails quiet when the stage goes dark.

Abbeville

Abbeville is where the Confederacy both began and ended, which is why it carries the name Birthplace and Deathbed of the Confederacy. The Burt-Stark Mansion is the reason for the second half, the Greek Revival home where a defeated Jefferson Davis held his last council of war in May 1865. The town’s showpiece, though, is the 1908 Abbeville Opera House on Court Square, once a stop for performers traveling between New York and Atlanta and still staging shows today. The square itself is one of the most intact nineteenth-century settings in the state, with brick storefronts and the county courthouse all within a short walk. Long Cane Scenic Area, west of town, trades the history for woods and water.

Travelers Rest

Travelers Rest is built around a rail trail now. The 22-mile Swamp Rabbit Trail runs straight through town, carrying cyclists and walkers past farms, breweries, and public art on the way to Greenville, and it has turned a former stagecoach stop into one of the Upstate’s busiest small towns. Paris Mountain State Park keeps forest trails and quiet lakes a short drive away for anyone who wants to climb instead of coast. Lake Placid offers a cold summer swim. Back downtown, the boutiques, cafes, and Swamp Rabbit Brewery, the town’s first microbrewery, handle the after-ride crowd.

Walhalla

Walhalla keeps a railroad tunnel that goes nowhere and stays 50 degrees all year. The Stumphouse Tunnel, dug into the mountain before the Civil War and never finished, runs a quarter-mile into the dark and draws a steady stream of curious walkers. Just beside it, the 100-foot Issaqueena Falls drops within a short walk of the parking area, and a 1.7-mile round trip leads to Yellow Branch Falls deeper in the forest. The town itself was founded by German immigrants in 1850 and still throws an Oktoberfest that draws thousands. The restored Walhalla Performing Arts Center, in an early twentieth-century schoolhouse, handles the concerts and plays.

South Carolina’s Favorites, Earned

The towns here make the favorites lists for different reasons. Beaufort, Bluffton, and Georgetown work the Lowcountry water, while Aiken and Camden run on horses and Cheraw and Abbeville keep their history in plain view. Newberry and Conway anchor their downtowns on an opera house and a riverwalk, and Travelers Rest and Walhalla lean on the trails and tunnels of the Upstate. None of them is trying to be a big city, and that is exactly why people keep coming back.

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