In 1697, Congregationalist settlers from Dorchester, Massachusetts, founded Dorchester, which prospered for nearly 100 years as an inland trade center for the region. Trade with Native Americans, the development of rice and indigo as valuable cash crops, and the arrival of enslaved people, planters, and merchants brought the town to an economic peak in the mid 1700s. As the frontier shifted further inland, overland roads improved, and the British brought destruction during the American Revolution, Dorchester slowly disappeared and was all but abandoned by the close of the 1700s. Today, the South Carolina State Park Service is charged with the care and preservation of this historical and archaeological treasure.
