♪ ♪ [birds chirping] [birds chirping] >> Sixteen feet.

>> Yeah, that's a nice one.

>> That's a nice one.

[birds chirping] [mimicking owl call] >> We've got some smoke.

Keep spraying.

>> ...all the knees throughout the whole area.

Beautiful, huh?

>> You want to look through there again?

♪ ♪ Narrator> Just a short drive from Columbia, South Carolina, lies a treasure, Congaree National Park.

♪ Though it's often referred to as a swamp, most of the park is a rare type of forest.

♪ John Cely> The popular image of a swamp is something full of snakes and alligators and quicksand and a lot of water in it, but the Congaree is nothing like that at all.

There are some natural depressions and low areas in the park that do have standing water in them for much of the year.

For most of the year, it's actually quite dry and easy to walk in with a pair of tennis shoes.

The correct terminology would be a floodplain or a bottomland hardwood forest.

♪ Narrator> Bottomland hardwood forests, like the one along the Congaree River, were unique to the coastal plain of the South, the low, flat region that begins at the foothills of the mountains and stretches from the Chesapeake Bay to eastern Texas.

♪ The rivers that run through the coastal plain are slow-moving and wide.

Like the Congaree, they flood their banks several times a year.

This intimate relationship between the land and the river creates a beneficial muck that brings a wealth of nutrients to the plants and animals in the floodplain.

>> Just some muck.

Let me take a sniff, please.

Usually that's reserved for fourth graders.

Okay, but he's doing great.

I get the first sniff here!

Yeah, look at this.

Mmm, that's delicious!

Okay, anybody else?

Y'all take a sniff of this.

Narrator> The rich soil of bottomland river forests like Congaree supports uncountable species of plants and animals and nurtures giant trees.

Native Americans cherished these forests, and they were home to the Lord God bird, the ivory-billed woodpecker.

These were the signature forests and rivers of the South traveled by John James Audubon and immortalized by William Faulkner: "The thick, black, slow, unsunned streams almost without current, which once each year ceased to flow at all, and then reverse, spreading, drowning the rich land and subsiding again, leaving it still richer."

♪ These forests sustained the spiritual and physical lives of generations of Southerners, who fished the rivers and hunted in the bottomland woods.

♪ Bobby Hall> My father leased what was known as Holly Hill Lumber Company land.

I think there was about 10,000 acres.

He leased it and had a deer hunting club down here.

The old hunting club, little house we had, it ran right along in here.

I really enjoyed that, just slipping around in the swamp and slipping around creeks or these old gum ponds and stuff in the winter and hunting ducks and all and just slipping around.

People don't even do that anymore.

>> Our grandfather, Ervin Portee, was an expert fisherman, and he was a hunting guide.

We learned that he made his canoes out of the cypress trees.

♪ Narrator> Black congregations in communities near the river bottom forests traditionally used their creeks for baptisms.

♪ Jimmie Dinkins> It's been a long time since I been down this way.

It brings back lots of memories.

This is where we used to get baptized, right here.

Same old spot.

My mother and my grandmother, they all was baptized down here.

>> My father's father, John, who was probably born in this house-- He was born in 1872-- he became a preacher just like his father Sam did.

But he was the pastor at St. Mark's Baptist Church.

>> And he baptized our mother when she was a little girl.

>> And that's how Mama and Daddy met.

Daddy would drive his father down for the services, and he met my mother there.

(laughs) Narrator> Bottomland hardwood forests like Congaree once spread out along the banks of all southern floodplain rivers, covering 15 million acres.

Today, all the great southern river bottom forests have been cleared or drained or cut into remnants.

Less than 1% of these forests remains, and they are considered an endangered landscape.

John Grego> It's astonishing to think of the sheer scale of transformation.

I mean, when you're traveling along the Mississippi Delta and traveling mile upon mile upon mile through soybean fields or cotton fields or whatever and realizing that that all used to be bottomland hardwood forest.

Narrator> Now Congaree National Park is the largest old-growth bottomland forest in the country, the only one that remains intact, reminding us of what was once a common feature of the southern landscape.

This is the story of how those forests disappeared and how Congaree National Park survived.

♪ [birds chirping] Before the arrival of Europeans, the Eastern United States was a forested world.

John Kupfer> There was an old adage that a squirrel could leave the Atlantic seaboard and make it all the way to Missouri without ever having to touch the ground, and that might not exactly be true, but by and large, that, for the most part, was true.

♪ Narrator> The growth of America required wood, and the supply seemed endless.

The northern forests went first.

By the beginning of the 19th century, most of the old-growth trees in the North had been cut.

They built cities, huge homes, and powered factories and railroads.

(machine whirring) John Kupfer> As those forests were developed and played out, what you had was movement really into the upper Midwest in the mid to late 1800s, and again as a lot of those forests were overexploited, you had people moving in and starting to log in the Southeast.

So really what you had was shifts in timber utilization from place to place to place.

♪ Narrator> In the South, which was slower to industrialize and had a smaller population, bottomland forests lived on as they had for centuries.

Few Southerners had the resources to cut these woods, and the South lacked railroads to carry logs to market.

♪ The Civil War left the North hungrier than ever for timber, and lumbermen began to look south, sending scouts to survey the southern woods.

They came back with tales of millions of acres of virgin forests, trees so big two men could not get their arms around them.

♪ Devastated by the Civil War, poverty-stricken Southerners were eager to sell their land, often for as little as 25 cents an acre, and to work cutting timber for pennies a day.

Announcer> Busy days in the swamps.

Another giant bites the dust.

[crackling loudly] Narrator> Northern businessmen wasted no time investing down South and building railroads.

By 1910, they had laid nearly 39 thousand miles of track.

The bottomland floodplain forests lent themselves to shipping by river.

Their valuable hardwoods included oaks, sweetgums, tupelo, and the greatest tree of all: the Bald Cypress.

John Cely> They called it the "wood eternal" because it was such a valuable, valuable wood before we had treated lumber and creosote and that kind of thing.

The ages of these cypress are very impressive.

These are by far the oldest trees in eastern North America.

I think the oldest documented Bald Cypress currently is about 1700 years old.

Narrator> One businessman who cast his sight southward was Chicago timber tycoon, Francis Beidler.

Bob Janiskee> He borrowed a million dollars, came down here, and he bought over 100 thousand acres right here in South Carolina, in the Congaree and Wateree and Santee River drainages.

He set up a timer company, the Santee River Cypress Lumber Company, and he set about to log the cypress, which were the big buck tree here.

John Cely> They had a lumber mill.

It's now under Lake Marion, a little town called Ferguson.

And they would cut these trees down with a crosscut saw.

They had two men with a crosscut saw standing on something called a springboard near the base of the tree.

And they would cut the tree above the swell or the buttress of the cypress.

Cypress stumps are scattered all over the park here.

It's pretty amazing to think that a stump can last for a hundred years or more.

♪ Narrator> Francis Beidler's logging operation didn't turn out to be as profitable as he had hoped, and it was hellishly difficult.

The hot, humid weather and frequent floods, even malaria, made for working conditions that few would tolerate today.

Beidler cut most of the big cypress in the Congaree, leaving the rest of the forest in a virgin state.

Then he called it quits.

Bob> By 1914, both the logging operation and the sawmill had been closed down.

But he did this unusual thing.

He put it into a timber reserve.

He could see the end of this era.

He could see the end of the frontier.

He could see a time when we would go to sustained yield and that trees like this would be worth so much more.

And so, Francis Beidler was a far-seeing man.

Narrator> Between 1880 and 1920, 90 million acres of southern timber were cut.

The Beidler land was on its way to becoming the last great bottomland hardwood forest in the South.

♪ The Beidler family also owned 60,000 acres of river bottom forest in the Santee Swamp, south of the Congaree.

In 1939, work began on a huge project in the Santee River floodplain, the construction of a utility that would be known as Santee Cooper.

In the rush to finish the project for World War II power generation, the Beidlers' land was forcibly condemned, and most of their trees ended up underwater.

The Beidlers got pennies on the dollar for their land, and they were bitter, but they continued to preserve the forest on the Congaree River.

They leased the Congaree land to a well-known nature writer, Harry Hampton, and his brothers for a hunt club.

Bobby> They had what they called a United States hunting club, and they were big turkey hunters.

I think that's all they did, was hunt turkeys, and they'd hunt them with the birddogs.

Narrator> But Harry Hampton was more poet and preservationist than hunter.

He was associate editor of "The State" newspaper in Columbia for many years, and he wrote a column for the paper called "Woods and Waters."

He was a founder and first president of the South Carolina Wildlife Federation.

Alex Sanders> Harry Hampton was a giant of a man in so many ways.

Both intellectually and physically-- He...I don't know how tall he was, but he seemed to me almost as tall as one of these pine trees.

He was a spiritual person.

He constantly, constantly reminded us of our duty, our obligation, to the natural world and particularly to the Congaree Swamp.

Harriott Faucette> His own brother and brother-in-law made fun of him.

They thought he was just "Crazy Harry," who was always spouting off about how we should work to save this area.

And because many of his friends had hunting rights on the property which is now the Congaree National Park, they didn't want to rock the boat, so to speak.

Narrator> It was Hampton who, in 1954, first raised the idea of permanently protecting the Congaree forest.

He proposed setting it up as a memorial to the Beidlers.

The family turned him down, but Harry Hampton had just begun to fight.

Harriott> In the wee hours, I would hear him in his home office, which was right next to my bedroom, typing away on his old Royal typewriter, writing furiously, letters to politicians at the state and national level.

Rudy Mancke> Harry had been writing and talking about this place way before anybody was thinking about actually-- and I think this is the proper way to say it-- going to the trouble of protecting it.

Narrator> In 1959, Hampton brought officials from the National Park Service and Richard Pough of the Nature Conservancy to the Beidler property.

Pough went on to lobby for its preservation, calling the forest's great trees "the Redwoods of the East."

Richard Pough> I know of no finer example of the rich hardwood forests of the Southeast than this magnificent Congaree Forest just south of Columbia along the river.

I think it is unique, and I think it should be preserved.

Narrator> In 1963, the National Park Service issued a report recommending the establishment of a Congaree National Monument.

Ann Timberlake> There was nothing like it in the park system.

It was considered unique.

That was important because we had a real struggle later getting the owners to recognize that this was unique.

Narrator> Still, no action was taken to protect the Beidler land.

It was 1969, and Harry Hampton was in his 70s, fighting a very lonely battle.

Harriott> It's amazing now, when conservationism and environmentalism are sexier topics, you know, to think of how hostile people were back then.

♪ (woman playing guitar ♪ and singing) Narrator> Soon, that would change.

The environmental movement was just beginning, and the country's youth were taking up the cause.

♪ In Columbia, a group of young people started listening to Harry Hampton.

Ann Timberlake> We had a local group that was forming about that time called the South Carolina Environmental Coalition.

Reporter> Recycling Day was held here in Columbia today, sponsored by the Environmental Coalition.

Organizers of the campaign said the turnout was the best ever.

Ann Timberlake> So this is kind of building up to that first Earth Day in 1970, and it just sort of touched something with me, and I actually wrote off to join the Sierra Club.

Ted Snyder> The big boom of environmentalism, at least in this part of the world, started after the first Earth Day.

People were attracted to it.

They suddenly realized there were things that needed to be protected.

Narrator> Ann Timberlake met Ted Snyder, the first chairman of the new Carolina Sierra Club in 1969.

He organized a trip to the Congaree Forest that October, and 50 people showed up.

Ted> We started off, our goal was to have one outing a month.

At every outing, we'd have big crowds, and people were signing up.

They wanted to join.

They wanted to get involved in what we were doing, and it just blossomed.

♪ Ann Timberlake> I think it was really the sort of germ.

It was the beginning of the sort of citizen campaign that took up where Harry Hampton had left it.

Narrator> John Cely was a student at Clemson when he met Harry Hampton.

John Cely> He was 50 years older than me.

I was...about 19 at the time, and he was...69.

But he had these big, long legs.

I think he was about 6'3" or 6'4", and...he just walked my legs off.

Narrator> Jim Elder was a biology teacher at Dreher High School in Columbia.

Jim Elder> So, you'd walked out down into that swamp, and you always saw something different.

It was so mysterious.

You could walk off a bluff, and it'd be a 20-degree difference down there because of the huge trees shading out the sun.

That's why I just came down every day, every day with my dog, and John Cely and I would come down and measure trees.

Narrator> Then in 1970, after more than 50 years and with no warning, the Beidlers began to sell logging permits on their Congaree land.

Bob> The Beidlers consulted foresters that told them that this was economically over mature.

Once a tree, once these forests reaches maturity, most of its energy is expended just in maintaining its existence, not in growing.

So the trees were falling and rotting, and they said, Okay, put it on the 30-year cycle for your softwood.

put it on a 50-year cycle for the large-diameter hardwood trees you're going to peel for veneer, and let's get at it.

♪ Jim> I came down, and one of my favorite places had been clear-cut, and no one had any idea they were going to start clear-cutting.

I can remember sitting down and crying.

Narrator> The sight of big trees being hauled out of the forest on trucks galvanized the young people who had fallen in love with the forest.

Dick Watkins, a DuPont engineer from Camden, was a member of the Sierra Club.

Brian Blackwelder lived in Columbia and was working for the Environmental Coalition.

Brian Blackwelder> Somebody came around with pictures of a logging truck, and the logging truck had a log that-- it was just a log, and filled the whole truck.

Narrator> Ann Jennings was director of the Environmental Coalition.

Ann Jennings> They started calling.

I said, "You can't believe this place!

"The biggest logs I've ever seen coming out of it!"

♪ Narrator> Brucie Alexander worked for the Audubon Society.

Brucie Alexander> I thought there was a great need for us to try to protect an area like this and of this scope.

And everybody looked at natural areas as only being places where you hunted, or if it was outdoors, you either made a paper bag out of it, or you smoked it, or you ate it for Sunday lunch.

So, this was a whole different concept to many South Carolinians.

Narrator> By 1972, Harry Hampton had a group of allies with a clear sense of urgency, plenty of enthusiasm, and very little experience.

John Cely> Just a bunch of young folks got together and said we've got to save this place.

As Jim Elder later said, we were too dumb to know better.

Narrator> They decided to make a direct appeal to the Beidler family.

Ann Timberlake> Ted and I, we were going out west for a Sierra Club meeting, and we detoured through Chicago and met with young Frank Beidler and their forester and I made the case that we would like to see this publicly acquired.

Narrator> The Beidlers had no interest in selling the Congaree tract.

They considered it an ordinary stand of timber that had passed its prime, and they still had painful memories of the forest condemnation of their land for Santee Cooper.

Bob Scott> When this proposal came forward that the government might condemn their property again, you can understand their apprehension.

Ann Timberlake> People didn't question if you condemned for a highway or to put in a lake when property was condemned.

This idea that you would condemn if need be, a forest if the owner didn't want to sell, that was sort of considered radical.

Narrator> The coalition began looking for national support, especially from the Sierra Club.

Jim> There was a guy named Brock Evans, who was the head of the legislative office in Washington at that time, and he was going to speak at Charlotte.

Brock Evans> These two great big guys came shambling up to talk to me, and one of them said, "We'd like to save this place in South Carolina called Congaree National Park," and I heard a little bit about it.

I asked 'em a little bit more about it.

Jim> I started showing him these pictures, and he said, "I never realized there were any trees like this in the East," 'cause he was from the state of Washington.

Brock> I thought to myself, fat chance.

Ten thousand acres of giant trees owned by a private timber company in a conservative state with Strom Thurmond as the senator.

But I didn't say that out loud because, you know, they were wonderful volunteers and they wanted to fight for something.

I wanted to help them do that.

Narrator> Evans and the head of the National Park Service visited the Beidler land in early 1974.

Brock> I was stunned.

I was just stunned.

I had seen a lot of big trees.

I'm well known as being a tree hugger in the Northwest and proud of it and have hugged a lot of big ones, but I never saw anything like this before.

I thought to myself, These are the forests where John James Audubon was, this is what he saw, and this is the last remnant of what was there, and we've got to save it.

Narrator> But logging of the forest continued, and it became clear that the drive to save the Congaree would have to be a grassroots effort.

Jim> That means you have to get your congressmen and your two senators, and maybe you have to get it through the Statehouse.

Brucie Alexander> And of course, to have that happen, we had to have enough public support and enough hue and cry out there for them to realize that this was indeed an issue for them and not just a ragtag bunch of people who wanted to see something protected.

Narrator> Jim Elder and company forged ahead, calling themselves the Congaree National Preserve Association.

Ann Timberlake> We knew that if this had been a Sierra Club attempt or a national Audubon attempt, it would be looked as, you know, those liberal, extreme environmentalists.

And so the Congaree Swamp Preserve Association was really the way we presented the case to the public, and we just worked as a team.

Jim> We would get people who had a thick accent to help us, so they wouldn't think it was just "damn Yankees" doing this.

Brian> And we were all galvanized into this focus that just carried us along at really a feverish pace.

Ann Jennings> We were meeting every day, and what are we going to do next, and what are we going to do next?

And so I said, "Well, I know what I can do.

I can go to any of these garden clubs and the women's things, and I will go anywhere you want me to go."

Brucie Alexander> People who were not interested in the environment to a big extent, to get those types of people excited about this area was a challenge.

But when it did happen, they were some of the best supporters.

♪ Narrator> As the preservationists became more organized, private landowners adjoining the Beidler tract grew fearful that they would be forced to sell.

The South Carolina Forestry Association mounted a campaign in opposition to saving the forest.

Bob Scott> The point that we were trying to make was first and foremost that we were against federal condemnation of private property to establish the swamp.

It was the landowners who had the most at stake and who were fully vested in the swamp, and it was for their...for them we got involved.

Ann Timberlake> I can remember going back to my own father and talking about having been out here, and the first thing my father said was, "But, Ann, that's privately owned.

If the owner doesn't want to sell it, I don't see how you can make this a park."

And so we had to fight that notion.

Brian> People told us it was...impossible, that it's never been done before and there was no chance of success and we'd have to convince too many people and it was being cut, there was no time.

It was just, we...

The drama of it, the tension of it was-- that, there really wasn't any time.

Bob Scott> In the swamp, you had some of the most valuable hardwoods anywhere in the country.

We had a very thriving furniture industry in South Carolina at that time, so there was a demand for quality hardwoods such as were found in the swamp.

So there were economic considerations.

Narrator> The environmentalists received a grant from the Sierra Club to study the economics of removal of the Beidler tract from timber production.

Ann Timberlake> That would be one of the first things that would be leveled, would be to say this was robbing the Midlands of jobs or this was taking land off the tax base.

Narrator> The study concluded that cutting timber in the Congaree forest only provided 91 jobs and that the potential loss of property taxes was insignificant.

Now the grassroots effort heated up, and the group came up with the idea of creating scripted slide shows.

Ann Timberlake> I think we had 30 copies made of our set of slides, and we had our xeroxed or mimeographed script, and actually my sister was in charge of mailing out these slide shows.

Margo saved her milk cartons.

There were those wax square milk cartons.

She would wash 'em out and dry 'em, and she would roll the slides in that script, put 'em in the milk carton, and then wrap the milk carton in brown paper and mail it.

John Cely> An acquaintance came in off the street.

We had a little office over there on Devine Street that some kind soul let us borrow, and he wanted to help out.

And Jim said, "Well, we've got a Rotary Club meeting in Five Points next Monday, standing room only.

Do you think you can do a slide show for us?"

And if you'd seen the look of fear on that guy's face, to think he would be... he said, "I've never been to the Congaree!

I don't know anything about it."

He said, "Well," Jim said, "We've got a slide show.

We've got a script.

All you have to do is show it and read it, and they haven't been there either."

Narrator> The volunteers presented more than 40 slide shows and distributed 10,000 brochures and countless bumper stickers.

Jim> Back then, the only bumper stickers you ever saw were "South of the Border" bumper stickers.

They were the ones that made bumper stickers famous.

And so if you put a bumper sticker on a car, there weren't ten other bumper stickers competing.

That was the only thing you saw.

♪ Narrator> Public sentiment in favor of protecting the Congaree forest was growing, and the issue was gaining media attention.

"South Carolina Wildlife" magazine published an article entitled "Forest of Champions."

It featured photographs of the giant trees on the Beidler land and a picture of Cely, Elder, and Dr. James Tanner, of ivory-billed woodpecker fame, examining the stump of a massive cherry bark oak that had been recently been cut.

♪ The intensity of the opposition increased.

Bob Scott> And the campaign consisted of communications and public relations.

It was aimed at the public, as well as our elected officials, business leaders, the governor, and of course, the congressional delegation.

Narrator> In June 1975, Governor James B. Edwards visited the Beidler land and declared himself on the side of the landowners.

>> I will never, ever participate in any program that goes in and condemns a man's private property and confiscates his private property under the guise of environmental protection.

Narrator> Congressman Floyd Spence still refused to take a stand.

Frustrated by the lack of support for their cause, the preservationists decided to hold a rally.

Planned for September 20, 1975, the gathering was called Congaree Action Now.

It featured nationally known scientists and environmentalists, and lunch.

Jim> It was going to cost 5.50 a person, which was big money back then.

But you got your lunch, but you got to hear all these famous people speak too.

John Cely> All these invitations were sent out, and it looked like it was going to be a big bust.

Jim> Everybody knew if we couldn't produce, that may have been the final nail in the coffin for the area.

John Cely> I think like a week before, they had 19, 20 people had signed up.

Jim> Brian was all stressed out.

I was all stressed.

Everybody was stressed out.

What are we going to do?

What are we going to do?

John Cely> And it just looked like-- it didn't look good.

Jim> But then they started coming in.

It was amazing.

Thirty and forty a day were signing up.

Ann Jennings> And they had a real problem.

They expected 300 people.

Then they said serve 350.

No, there are three more buses are coming down from somewhere and somewhere.

And it just got bigger and bigger, and I think it was something about 750-plus.

Narrator> Speakers at the Congaree Action Now rally made fervent pleas for the preservation of Congaree.

One of them was the Sierra Club's Brock Evans.

Brock> I think it's the duty of the people of South Carolina to make the gift to the rest of the nation of their finest place, too, which is Congaree.

There's no place else like it on this nation and probably on this earth, and I hope you can save it for all of us.

Rudy Mancke> I was at that meeting, and Dr. Tanner was the guy who was working with ivory-billed woodpeckers.

He was one of those people who said any old-growth forest, river bottom forest in the Southeast, especially a chunk like this, really has to be protected because most of them are gone.

Ann Timberlake> Ted Snyder was the closing speaker, and he got everybody riled up in this chant.

He would say, "So what do we want now?"

And everybody would say, "Congaree action now!"

"So what do we want to tell the governor?"

"Congaree action now!"

Ann Jennings> It was just so filled with vibrancy and hope and, yes we used that phrase, "Yes, we can."

Ann Timberlake> It was very exciting.

I think it's a moment that any person, who was you know, you would never forget that moment.

I think that was when we realized that we had the public's attention.

Narrator> The next day, the rally made the national news.

But Congressman Spence resisted the pressure to act.

Brock> He was the key to this campaign, and these wonderful folks picked it all up and started mailing him keys.

Jim> And sure enough, over 400 keys were sent to Congressman Spence.

Narrator> Strom Thurmond was in favor of preservation, but Fritz Hollings was on the fence.

In an article in "The State" newspaper, reporter Lee Bandy published Hollings' Washington phone number, urging readers to call.

Letters flowed into the offices of South Carolina's elected officials.

Mail to Senator Hollings ran 15 to 1 in favor of the preserve.

Jim> People don't realize the power they have.

You know, some of those people that wrote to Hollings probably never wrote another letter, their first and last letter they ever wrote, but they don't know what they did to loosen this legislation.

Narrator> Now things begin to break for the preservationists.

In November, the Beidlers expressed a willingness to sell at a fair price, and the Forestry Association called off its campaign.

Bob Scott> When they elected to voluntarily enter into negotiation to sell the property, then that was our defense, and we had to accept that decision.

Narrator> Frank Beidler III may have had personal reasons for agreeing to preserve the forest.

Bob Scott> There was a group of school kids that came in a school bus down to the swamp to tour the area, and I think they were probably fourth, fifth graders.

And he was there, and they unloaded from the bus and ran out into the swamp and was gazing around at all the birds and the big trees, and he said that it just touched his soul to see those kids admiring the beauty of that swamp.

Narrator> Governor Edwards also changed his position, and the South Carolina General Assembly passed a resolution in favor of preservation.

Congressman Spence introduced a bill in Congress proposing a Congaree Swamp National Preserve.

Rep. Floyd Spence> A committee has already been down to visit the swamp from the Interior Department.

The subcommittee chairman, under whose jurisdiction this matter will fall, I understand will be down next week sometime himself to personally, personally, look at the swamp.

And hearings have been scheduled for the week after we go back in session, the latter part of April.

I didn't really anticipate things would go along as fast as they are.

Narrator> On September 21, 1976, the House of Representatives approved Spence's bill and authorized 35 and a half million dollars to acquire the Beidler land.

Hopes soared, then sank when the purchase stalled in the Senate.

The senators from South Carolina couldn't agree.

Jim> Strom Thurmond was with us, but we needed Hollings on our side, and he was reluctant.

He wasn't moving.

Narrator> The legislative session was set to end on October 2nd, and the bill still had to get through the rules committee, the full House, and the Senate.

Jim> If the legislative session ended, then we had to start all over again in the next... because all legislation dies on a Presidential election year.

Narrator> Finally, on September 28th, the Congaree bill made it to the floor of the Senate.

Jim> Congaree was number 15 of some 35 or 36, and it came up at like 5 minutes of 7:00, and at 7:00, the gavel went down, and no other piece of legislation got through.

Narrator> On October 18, 1976, President Ford signed the bill creating the 15,200-acre Congaree Swamp National Monument.

Harry Hampton was 79.

He had fought to preserve the Congaree for more than 20 years.

Ann Jennings> When we finally had the law passed, we had a big celebration at our house, and he had a little cannon that's just one of those things that you put out, something out and so we started bang, bang, bang!

I think the people who were on our back porch, (laughing) Our neighbors, we had a wonderful time.

Brock> Strom was invited, and I'll never forget I was on one side of the bonfire, and there's Strom and he was asked to say some words, and he got up and the firelight's flickering on his face, and he just said, "I love this state.

I love this state.

I'm so glad we did this."

And I knew he really believed it and really meant it.

And that's what the people of South Carolina did.

They demanded their politicians do something right about this, and they did.

Brian> We were there when it counted, and that was... that is irreplaceable.

And even if we'd lost, we couldn't have helped but try.

(birds chirping) Jim> Whenever Congaree called, you stepped up and did what you had to do.

There were no excuses because you knew if you didn't, if you walked away from this grand forest, it would be gone, and then that would be on your conscience for the rest of your life.

Ann Timberlake> It really inspired me through the rest of my career, that individuals can make a difference, that elected leaders will listen.

John Cely> Just ordinary citizens can really move the world if they want to.

♪ Ann Jennings> No one ever thought that we would be where we are right now, and it took people that we don't even know about that participated in this, and it's a glorious thing.

Bob Scott> It was a win-win situation for both sides of the issue.

The proponents were successful in creating the national park.

We were successful in defending the rights of those individual landowners who simply did not want to sell.

Narrator> Wrangling over a price for the Beidler's land continued for several years.

In the end, they got more than twice the original offer, over $70 million dollars, and condemnation worked in their favor.

Bob Scott> The condemnation proceedings were strictly for tax considerations that benefited the Beidler family.

Narrator> In 2003, the Congaree became the nation's 57th national park, the only one in South Carolina.

The visitor center is named for Harry Hampton, who died in 1980.

Congaree National Park has been declared an international biosphere reserve and a globally important birding area.

It is a unique outdoor laboratory.

Theresa Thom> The fact that we are an old-growth floodplain forest makes the research here at Congaree very important for comparisons for other floodplain forests that may have been more hydrologically altered or logged.

John Grego> The old ranger station has been converted into the center or old-growth bottomland forest research and education.

The forest itself is very dynamic.

Trees are always falling down.

That creates openings.

Trees compete to fill those openings.

I think it fascinates researchers that in a certain sense you have this old-growth forest and it's in some type of equilibrium, but it's a very dynamic equilibrium.

Theresa> As far as a barometer of change or looking at potential influences of human activity within a floodplain landscape, Congaree is really a fantastic treasure trove of information.

Rudy> I've been looking at it for a long time, and I find new things every time I come down here, plant and animal species that are typical of a river bottom forest in the Southeastern United States, and the bigger the chunk, the better it is for all that biodiversity.

And that's really what's happened here.

We've protected a big chunk of this so we can study it, learn from it, and, to me every time I come, you know, be amazed by it.

♪ Tracy Swartout> There are hidden gems within the National Park Service, smaller parks that are less visited like our park, with 100,000 to 150,000 visitation annually at this point, where not so many people have been.

One of the greatest things about this park is it's the largest wilderness area this close to a capital city in the entire country, and so people have the opportunity to drive less than half an hour out of the bustling city environment, and then you step out of your car, and you're in these incredible trees.

Fran Rametta> Bald cypress, just like the Spanish moss, right?!

This one's about 20 feet around in circumference, 110 feet tall.

Voice-over> I think one of the universal attractions is big trees.

If there could be a universal language for people all over the world, it would be big trees.

I think that is one of the reasons we have had 100, or people from 100 different nations sign our guest register in the last 25 years.

♪ Narrator> In addition to its matchless biodiversity and enormous trees, Congaree National Park has a rich cultural history.

Jimmie Dinkins> This was like a playground for us.

We used to come down here, and 15 of us, we would come and fish and hunt and, you know, cook.

We would do all that kind of stuff down here, Swim.

We would clean our little places, and we'd go swimming down here.

Sometimes we would stay overnight, and cook and our fathers would come looking for us down here, but as long as we was okay, they was okay with us being down here.

There wasn't anything to get into but the water.

(gospel singing) Tracy> We're one of 390 units in the Park Service.

We're part of this big national organization.

We're also very much embedded in the community.

(gospel singing) And I think all parks are like this.

They represent the Service, this America's best idea that we have, but then they also represent the greatest that the communities have to offer.

(gospel singing) We have Swampfest, which has been going on for a number of years.

That's actually, an event where we partner with the outside community, the local community, a couple of local churches, and some local historic sites.

(marching band plays) This highlights the community involvement and really has a strong human component to the story that we're telling.

(folk music) >> I'm just glad it's a national park now, because it gives our little community more exposure.

More people come through, more new people, so it's a great thing for the neighborhood.

Narrator> The Harriet Barber House, located near the park in the village of Hopkins, is a symbol of one family's historic relationship with the land.

Barber, a former slave, made the final payment on the property in 1879.

Her grandson, John Barber, lived here until he left to join the Navy.

John Barber> Most of African Americans in here didn't own.

Most of 'em was renters or sharecroppers.

So when you own for 40 acres it's pretty...

I'm pretty proud of that.

Narrator> The family has preserved the Barber House, using it over the years for special occasions.

Now, it is a historic house-museum.

>> Preservation and conservation go hand in hand, and it's so important to document through historical preservation our lands and the accomplishments of persons who were once slaves, and hopefully that would instill other persons to have the same appreciation for our history and then look to protect the land.

♪ John Barber> Industry move in and come with complications.

But right now it's serene in here, and I like it.

Of course, I don't know what the youngsters think.

[chuckling] But I like it like that.

I would like to see it stay a residential area.

♪ Narrator> Its proximity to Columbia raises issues of stewardship of the land and waters near the park.

♪ Tracy> I think the rural nature of the land has been changing.

Columbia itself is growing, certainly within the county.

It's growing in all directions.

The University of South Carolina has had housing that's growing out towards the park.

And so I think we will consistently have development encroaching upon the areas outside the park.

We have to be careful because development on the outside could potentially put park resources at risk, but I think there's a way that development can be harmonious with nature.

Narrator> The Congaree Land Trust helps preserve land surrounding the park and its neighboring rivers: the Congaree, the Wateree, and the Santee.

Within this huge river system of 215,000 acres, called the Cowasee Basin, the land trust works with private landowners to create voluntary easements on their land, protecting it from development.

Billy Cate> And of that 215,000, it's something now in excess of 80,000 acres that's protected in some form or another, either public or private.

Today, it's still the same as it was when I was a boy.

It's probably the same as it was 150 years ago.

And I think our goal is to keep the focus area intact as close to what it is today as far out into the future as we can see.

The park is permanently protected, and Mother Nature will be the manager of what the park looks like 50 years from now.

In so much of the rest of the Cowasee, it's individual private landowners, such as myself, that are responsible for being stewards to make that land productive and at the same time preserve its flavor and quality, if you will.

Edmund Taylor> When I was struggling, there wasn't anyplace to protect the forest I wanted to preserve, and then we had the Congaree Land Trust develop.

And throughout the state, we have multiple trusts now.

So all over the state, they're beginning to preserve more and more beautiful sites.

Billy> I think the park becomes so much more meaningful as part of a broader landscape than just the Congaree National Park.

I would hate to think that 50 years from now that, that park is all we have of the Congaree Swamp.

I would like to think we'd have the entire Cowasee Basin.

Narrator> The quality of the Cowasee Basin, including Congaree National Park, also depends upon its biggest upstream neighbor, the city of Columbia.

The Congaree River begins here, at the confluence of the Broad and Saluda Rivers, and meanders for 60 miles before joining the Wateree to form the Santee River.

♪ The relationship between the city and the river is complex and interdependent.

In years of very heavy rain, the Congaree has caused serious floods in low-lying parts of Columbia and its sister cities, Cayce and West Columbia.

Stanley Goodwin> The city, of course, had been in touch with our county officials, and we had made preparations to evacuate people, so we have pretty well had our thing on it and trust in the good Lord's work here that maybe this won't be--that the water won't get any higher.

Narrator> Yet city residents have long valued the river and its undeveloped riverbanks.

Mary Taylor> I think generations of Columbia have always loved the Congaree River and wanted to develop this part of the town.

In 1905, Kelsey and Guild did a plan for city improvement in which they had all of this area in a park.

Narrator> The future well-being of Lower Richland and the Congaree Park is closely tied to how Columbia cares for the river.

Bob Guild> Things that are done upstream, where we are here in downtown Columbia, inevitably impact the Congaree park, which is downstream from here.

Narrator> Today, the banks of the Congaree are popular recreational greenways, forming a buffer between the river and urban pollution.

Bob Guild> We haven't messed up our riverfront as have many other cities that are oriented toward water.

You can engineer treatment works.

You can build a huge wastewater treatment system that costs tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

But nature knows how to do that for free if you use nature and allow nature to perform its functions.

[water babbling] Narrator> But in the summer of 2008, a sewage spill into the Saluda River upstream of the Congaree demonstrated the need for more vigilant protection of Columbia's waterways.

The city called a river summit.

Bob> And you know, there was an outpouring of hundreds of people who spent hours passionately talking about their devotion to this green and blue space.

I think there is a widespread sense of stewardship.

♪ Narrator> Now, Columbia has an official river keeper.

♪ Alan Mehrzad> One of the things I do is I respond to citizen complaints, and this is very important where if somebody is out walking their dog at night and they're walking along the river and they see some bubbles or they smell a foul odor or notice something that's not right, it's important that they can notify somebody and that it will be documented.

So what I do is respond to citizen complaints.

It's important for the community to know that I'm out there, and I will thoroughly document and investigate any and all claims.

Just as man is charged with looking after and caring for his fellow man, I believe that we have that same level of responsibility to protecting our environment that we live in.

(waves crashing) >> Look at you!

Narrator> In April 2009, the members of the grassroots movement that saved the park held a reunion.

>> And whatever the discouragement was in this campaign, people hung in there and kept plodding along until the very end.

And so now we have this magnificent park here because so many hundreds of people contributed.

Ted> I had a small part in this.

Jim Elder did the real work.

I was kicking him and cussing at him and fussing and yapping at the heels of all these other people, but they did the real work.

I knew how to get people interested in it, and it worked.

♪ Ann Jennings> I think it's just a little bit here, a little bit there.

Maybe it isn't the fire that we had in the early '70s and through the '70s, because a lot of things were happening then!

We changed a lot of things, and it's...maybe it's more quieter, or it's maybe organized, but there's still... a lot of people who want to change things.

[woodpecker drumming] Brucie> We can't take an area like Congaree National Park and put it in a little glass dome and put it in a museum.

We can't collect it like a little piece of a battleship or a bone of some mammal.

We have to keep it alive, and we have to keep it intact, and we have to show the vast magnitude of it for it to exist because it's too much a part of our whole fragile, delicate... spaceship of earth that we're all flying around on, whether we be a bee, a mosquito, or a next-door neighbor.

[rain pattering softly] Fran> The big trees and the forest, the solitude, the peacefulness, the serenity, the beauty-- I mean, how do you measure beauty?

Is it 25 inches long and 5 feet wide?

Those are things that you can't measure and things we can't put a price on.

I think that attracts a lot of people today.

It will always be with us, as long as we protect this forest.

Rudy> This is preserved now, and that preservation is the best way to conserve what we have here and let nature kind of take its course, and it really has been an amazing learning experience for anybody who's watched the changes that have occurred just in my lifetime, since I've been looking at this place.

[birds chirping, insects buzzing] Bob> And each time I come here, it's a very emotional experience.

If you've ever walked deep in this forest, you know that it's like a cathedral.

Because the canopy closes way up there, the forest floor is shaded, so you don't have a lot of weedy growth, not a lot of shrubs and stuff down there, and it does have this dimly lighted aspect that cathedrals have.

I've been to the great cathedrals in Europe.

This is a cathedral of nature, nature's cathedral, and I feel privileged, okay, to be here.

Alex Sanders> The swamp provides what Whitman called, an opportunity for inviting of the soul.

It does us good just to know there's a place where nobody will ask you the last four digits of your Social Security number or your mother's maiden name.

No one will ask you for a picture ID.

This is a place of escape from those considerations and maybe an opportunity, even though we are not here, to know that there is such a place exists.

[insects buzzing, bird squawking] Mary> Mankind is much more of a spiritual creature when he is able to get out into God's creation and enjoy the beauties and the wonders and the majesty.

You don't go to a shopping center to restore your soul.

You go out into the woods!

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