Vegetation in South Carolina varies according to province. The woodlands of the Blue Ridge are home to many northern species, such as white pine and hemlock. Mid-20th-century abandonment of row crops in the Piedmont province has allowed the return of forests but not the oak and hickory that typified the 18th century. The most common tree in the province today is the loblolly pine, vast acreages of which have been planted. Huge pines, gums, live oaks, cypresses, and magnolias draped with Spanish moss are common sights in the Coastal Plain, especially in the southern and Sea Islands areas. State and federal agencies protect much of the coastal and mountain areas by way of parks and refuges.

The white-tailed deer is the best known of the mammals found in South Carolina. Its population in the Piedmont had declined severely by the 1940s, but restocking from the Coastal Plain and restoration of forests have now ensured its statewide distribution. Other species, such as the American beaver and the wild turkey, also have regained prominence. Many species, including bison, wapiti (elk), pumas (cougars), and wolves, disappeared by the 1800s, and black bears are rare today. Red foxes and wild pigs, both introduced by Europeans, are widespread. Woodchucks and red squirrels are found in the Blue Ridge, while the Coastal Plain harbours alligators and all four types of poisonous snakes found in the United States. South Carolina has recorded more than 300 species of birds. Most faunal species occur statewide, but some are limited to either the Piedmont or the Coastal Plain since the Sandhills create a formidable barrier, especially to reptiles and amphibians.

Population composition

Native peoples inhabited what is now South Carolina for thousands of years before the area was settled by white Europeans in the late 17th century. Although their population declined rapidly after European contact, several thousand Native Americans still reside in the state. The Catawba and Pee Dee, although not the largest of South Carolina’s Native American groups, have received both federal and state recognition; the more numerous Santee have received official acknowledgment from the state only. The Catawba constitute the sole Native American group in South Carolina to have a reservation, which is located in the north-central part of the state.

People of white European ancestry account for roughly two-thirds of all residents of South Carolina. The state’s colonial population was a mixture of European peoples. Although the first white settlers were from England and Barbados, the colony by the 1680s was receiving Scots and a number of Huguenots escaping France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (the law that had guaranteed religious freedom to followers of Protestantism). Some of the French later settled in the western part of the state near Abbeville. Germans moved into the midlands in the 1730s, concentrating along the Saluda River, and Welsh Baptists settled the Welsh Tract on the Pee Dee River. In the 1750s and ’60s, Scotch-Irish settlers from Pennsylvania and Virginia spread into the South Carolina Piedmont. In the 19th century, however, few of the millions of European immigrants who flooded the United States settled in South Carolina.

Five individuals of Black African ancestry were among the 148 original colonists of South Carolina. With the expansion of cotton plantations during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, tens of thousands of Africans were imported to the young state as slaves. After the American Civil War (1861–65), freed slaves in certain areas were able to purchase the lands that they had worked, thereby anchoring their traditions and communities for generations. A large portion of the Sea Islands, for instance, remained in the hands of local African Americans well into the 20th century, and even in the early 21st century some Black Sea Islanders still were able to speak Gullah, a patois derived from English and several West African languages that dates to the plantation era. In the late 19th century about three-fifths of South Carolina’s total population was Black, but heavy northward out-migration to largely urbanized states, especially during the Great Migration in the 20th century, reduced this proportion substantially. Since the late 20th century, African Americans have accounted for roughly three-tenths of South Carolina’s population.

A small but growing portion of the population consists of immigrants and their families. The Hispanic population is the most prominent of these groups, followed by people of Asian origin.

Settlement patterns

South Carolina’s agricultural belt dominates the inner Coastal Plain, while the outer Coastal Plain—extending about 70 miles (110 km) inland from the Atlantic coast—is largely forested. The coastal zone was abandoned as an agricultural area around the turn of the 20th century, but effective land management has allowed truck farming (the cultivation of produce to be trucked directly to the market) to prosper. As a focus of major tourism and recreation development since the mid-20th century, the Coastal Plain has been the site of intense land-use competition.

Although South Carolina has remained more rural than most other states, its metropolitan areas have grown to accommodate more than half of the state’s total population. Areas of high density are found in the upper Piedmont around Greenville, Spartanburg, and Anderson; in the midlands around Columbia and Florence; and along the coast, near Charleston, Hilton Head Island, and Myrtle Beach.

Demographic trends

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, South Carolina’s population grew much more slowly than that of the country as a whole as a result of out-migration of both Black and white residents. However, by the 1970s this began to change, and South Carolina’s growth rate since then typically has exceeded the national average. The state’s population—like that of the entire country—is aging, but at a faster rate; this is attributable in part to increasing in-migration of retirees and out-migration of younger residents. The vast majority of South Carolina’s residents were born in the state, but metropolitan areas, especially in the midlands and along the coast, have a higher percentage of residents born elsewhere. Since the late 20th century, South Carolina’s Hispanic population has been among the fastest growing in the country, owing largely to expansive immigration from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America. There also has been an increase in Asian immigration.