Welcome to the Charleston Trident area, a region that has built on its strength from the past to form its future. The history of the area is like no other. The vitality and quality of life we now enjoy were established hundreds of years ago as Charleston was first developed. We can credit the strong past provided to us for the richness of life we savor today. To understand the area's successes, first the history must be known.
Our region's history began in April of 1670 as a group of English colonists landed on the Carolina coast. They settled on a tract of land they soon called Charles Towne, in honor of King Charles II of England.
By 1672 the expanding colony recognized the advantages of relocating across the river on a peninsula sandwiched between what are today's Ashley and Cooper rivers. It was from this settlement the port city of Charles Towne grew.
A lucrative seafaring trade, coupled with laws guaranteeing religious tolerance, lured waves of immigrants including French Huguenots, Irish, Scots, Sephardic Jews and Germans. Africans from barbakos were the first of their ancestors to colonize the Carolinas.
Charles Towne played a prominent role in the nation's founding. With the arrival of many immigrants from different countries, it is no wonder the area possessed such great leaders, a fact the Trident area can still claim. One of these legendary leaders is Charles Pinckney, a Charlestowne aristocrat, who was the first to propose a Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution in 1787. Pinckney, along with two other Charlestonians, John Rutledge and Pierce Butler, signed the United States Constitution. In 1788, South Carolina had ratified the Constitution.
During the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the prosperous merchants and plantation owners built the elegant mansions and picturesque streets still admired by visitors today. During these years, Charles Towne, renamed Charleston in 1783, was the cultural center of the Antebellum Age, as its statesmen, artists and writers left their imprint on the young nation. In 1773 the first science museum in America was founded in Charles Towne. Leisure activities began to surface, with Charleston organizing America's first golf club in 1786, known as the South Carolina Golf Club. By the middle of the 19th century, prosperity from an agrarian society was interlaced with interest in cultural affairs.