Congaree National Park Guide

South Carolina’s only national park protects the largest intact old-growth bottomland hardwood forest left in the country — a floodplain jungle of enormous trees just southeast of Columbia, where champion loblolly pines and bald cypress soar past 150 feet to form one of the tallest forest canopies in eastern North America. People call them “the redwoods of the East,” and walking the 2.4-mile elevated Boardwalk Loop through the dim, green, primeval bottomland is genuinely awe-inspiring. Its rarest show comes for a couple of weeks in mid-to-late May, when synchronous fireflies blink in unison across the forest floor — one of only a few places in the world it happens — and the park runs a lottery for a spot.