South Carolina Facts -- National Geographic

Fast Facts

Population:: 4,147,152
Capital:: Columbia; 117,394
Area:: 32,020 square miles (82,932 square kilometers)
Per Capita Income:: U.S. $25,395
Date Statehood Achieved:: May 23, 1788

Before 1860, rice, indigo, and cotton cultivated by a large slave population enriched tidewater planters. Shattered by the Civil War, which raged from 1861-65, South Carolina came to depend on textile goods and tobacco. Historic Charleston and many nearby antebellum plantations evoke the Old South. Today, retirement communities and resorts such as Myrtle Beach and Hilton Head line the fast-developing seacoast.

ECONOMY

Industry: Service industries, tourism, chemicals, textiles, machinery, forest products
Agriculture: Poultry, tobacco, nursery stock, dairy products, cotton

—Text From National Geographic Atlas of the World, Eighth Edition

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