Welcome to Fort Thicketty

Welcome to Fort Thicketty. Fort Thicketty. , (Preface) , A Backcountry Stronghold , A map of 1777 shows the location of the Pacolet River Valley. That year, the Cherokee people signed a peace treaty with the local government, which ended hostilities with the colonists and relinquished this territory to the State of South Carolina. , Library of Congress, Centuries ago, the Pacolet River Valley belonged to the Cherokee people. In the mid-1700s, European immigrants were drawn to the area by the promise of fertile land. They arrived from Pennsylvania and Virginia on the Great Wagon Road, and with land grants from the British colonial government, established farms on Cherokee ground., In March of 1755 John Grindal settled at Grindal Shoals, an important crossing on the Pacolet River. Other pioneering families soon followed and before the Revolutionary War, a network of roads developed at this river crossing, connecting Backcountry towns and trade routes to the coast and Charleston., But life in the remote Backcountry was hard. Bandits roamed the countryside. Tensions over land rights between white immigrants and native Cherokee people led to violence. In response to rising brutality between native peoples and encroaching settlers, Fort Thicketty was built here by Scots-Irish pioneers around 1769 to protect them from the threat of Cherokee raids., Later, during the Revolutionary War, the fort was occupied by Loyalists, who were Americans allied with the British. In July 1780, Patriot forces, Americans fighting for independence, surrounded Fort Thicketty and seized it without firing a shot., The reconstructed historic fort you see here today is made from remnants of the original structure. Take the walking trail to tour the grounds and view the colonial well that supplied the fort with fresh water., The Great Wagon Road , Map illustration by Dale Watson