Waccamaw Neck - Geography

Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
Locals call the spit of land between the Waccamaw river and the Atlantic ocean a “neck.”  That is more an American idiomatic term than a precise one.  It also is used in New York. [1]

Merriam-Webster suggests its use with a “narrow stretch of land” is based on a metaphoric application of a “relatively narrow part” like the anatomical section that connects the head with the shoulders. [2]

Wikipedia describes a “neck” as a “narrow stretch of land with water on each side” like an isthmus. [3]  Elsewhere it suggests “isthmus” comes from a Greek word meaning “neck.” [4]  That term does not apply to Georgetown County because an isthmus connects two pieces of land, and this one terminates in Winyah Bay.

The area around Winyah Bay was official identified as an estuary in 1992, [5] and the mouth of the Santee River, just a few miles south is called a delta. [6]  The first refers to the junction of a fresh water river with a saline ocean. [7]  Wikipedia limits “delta” to triangular pieces of land, [8] and calls the Winyah Bay a “drowned coastline.” [9]  It indicates freshwater deltas occur in subestuaries that include “drowned coastal river valleys that were inundated by rising sea levels during the late Pleistocene.” [10]

Genevieve Willcox Chandler’s brother, Clarke says the eastern shore of the Waccamaw river is “a peninsula varying in width from three to fourteen miles.”  He added that, “while this area is a peninsula, it is never spoken of as such.”  Instead, “to the tourist and developers it is ‘The Grand Strand’.” [11]

His reference to developers is a clear reminder that the label applied to an area is closely tied to the perceived uses of its real estate.  Geographers, who had no particular preconceptions, simply saw it as an exposed part of the ocean floor.  That may be the most correct, but is not a concept conducive to settlement.

Wythe Cooke suggests South Carolina’s coastal plain was formed after the Appalachians existed. [12]  At the onset of the Miocene, when temperatures began to cool 23.03 million years ago, the coastal area was a nearly level plain. [13]  The ocean invaded several times, leaving marine deposits that since have been eroded.  The land was exposed during the Pliocene, which began 5.1 million years ago, and then was drowned again during much of the Pleistocene. [14]

The falls and rises of the ocean, which accompanied the ebbs and flows of the glaciers, created seven distinct terraces between the Piedmont and the modern shore. [15]  When the ice melted, sea levels rose and covered the plain.  When temperatures fell and ice reformed, the water retreated leaving the old shore as a rise in elevation.

Georgetown County is on the most recent terrace, the Pamlico, which reaches as far north as Pamlico Sound in North Carolina [16] where New Berne is located.  Its inland boundary is 25' above sea level. [17]  The land of Hezekiah Maham is at this boundary with the Talbot terrace. [18]

The Pee Dee is the nearest through-flowing.  It enters the ocean at Winyah Bay.  The Waccamaw, which joins with it in the bay, was created after the Pamlico terrace was formed. [19]  The Waccamaw Neck rises between the river and the continental shelf that extends underwater.  Cooke describes it as “a very impermanent boundary, that shifts a little with every change of tide and even with changes in the direction of the wind.” [20]

As part of the ocean floor it is subject to daily tides that spread salt water along the east coast.  These rise “from six to eight feet at neap tides, and from eight to ten feet at spring tides; they are however much influenced by wind.” [21]  The water has left deposits that have formed a sandy ridge [22] that stops the salty water.  The action of the tides continue for another fifteen miles, that flood the western side of the neck with fresh water. [23]

The red highway on the United States Geological Survey map, which includes Murrells Inlet where Chandler lived, generally follows that ridge a little to the east.  The gold lines are .91 miles apart, so settlement in 2016 began about two miles from the ocean.  The area between it and sea would have been dominated by salt-water marshes. [24]

A team, led by Willie McLendon, said Sandy Island, called Richmond on the map, “was deposited as a sandbar, and was subsequently drifted into its present topographic form by the winds.” [25]  James Michie suggests the entire Waccamaw Neck “represents a Pleistocene barrier island.” [26]

The curving dark brown line, most easily seen at the bottom left, indicates ground to the west of the sand ridge that is at least 20' above sea level.  From its location near the Waccamaw on the above map, it moves inland, suggesting a stronger land core with later sedimentary deposits to the south.  The land that formed the plantation where Hagar Doctor Brown lived, [27] The Oaks, is defined as an island by geologists.

The grid of blue lines on the island are the remains of canals dug to irrigate rice fields.  The irregular blue lines around it, Flagg Island, and Brookgreen Island suggest creeks, which isolated the lands, served as boundaries between plantations.

The climate is semi-tropical with the Gulf Stream just fifty miles offshore. [28]  Short winters and plentiful rainfall encourage the growth of palmettos on the coast, and cypress inland. [29]  The top eight inches of silty clay sits over three or more feet of black mucky material created, in part, by rotting vegetation. [30]  In 1809, David Ramsay noted:

“when we penetrate through river swamps, we frequently meet with the trunks of large trees which appear to have been buried for ages; and that as far as these swamps have been penetrated, they consist of a rich blue clay in a black soft mould.” [31]

When Englishmen arrived, much of the area would have been heavily timbered swamp land. [32]  What land was exposed was sand.  Ramsay believed “the swamps and low grounds were of forbidding aspect, thickly wooded and hard to clear; and when they were cleared were not adapted to any productions with which the inhabitants for the first twenty-four years of the settlement were acquainted.” [33]

No one mentioned the other deterrent to settlement: snakes and other dangerous animals that must have inhabited the virgin wetlands.  Ben Horry told Chandler one tale about a runaway slave who hid in a hollow log where a snake crawled over him and another memorat about a bull killed by a rattlesnake. [A]  Brown and John Simmons mentioned recent deadly snake bites. [35]

Graphics
United States, Department of the Interior.  Geological Survey.  Selections from “Brookgreen Quadrangle, South Carolina, 7.5 Minute Series.”  2014.

End Notes
1.  “Neck: Long Island’s Favorite Geographical Term.”  City-Data website, accessed 23 October 2022.

2.  “Neck Noun.”  Merriam-Webster website, accessed 23 October 2022.
3.  “Glossary of Geography Terms.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 23 October 2022.
4.  “Isthmus.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 23 October 2022.

5.  “North Inlet-Winyah Bay NERR.”  University of South Carolina website, accessed 24 October 2022.

6.  T. Edward Nickens.  “The Water Way.”  South Carolina Wildlife Magazine, May–June 2012.

7.  “Estuary.”  National Geographic website, accessed 24 October 2022.
8.  “River Delta.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 24 October 2022.
9.  “Winyah Bay.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 24 October 2022.
10.  Wikipedia, Delta.

11.  Clarke Willcox.  “Preface to Historical Sketches.”  1967.  105 in Clarke A. Willcox.  Musings of a Hermit.  Charleston, South Carolina: Walker, Evans and Cogswell Company, seventh edition, second printing, 1986.  Genevieve is introduced in the post for 15 December 2022.

12.  C. Wythe Cooke.  Geology of the Coastal Plain of South Carolina.  Washington, DC: United States Department of the Interior, Bulletin 867, 1938.  1.

13.  Cooke.  5.
14.  Cooke.  4.
15.  Cooke.  6.

16.  Cooke.  6.  Minnie Lee, who knew a version of “O Lord. Won’t You Come by Here?” in Pamlico County, North Carolina, is mentioned in the post for 8 December 2019.

17.  Cooke.  7.
18.  Maham is discussed in the posts for 13 November 2022 and 20 November 2022.
19.  Cooke.  12.
20.  Cooke.  3.

21.  David Ramsay.  The History of South-Carolina.  Charleston, South Carolina: David Longworth, 1809.  Reprinted as Ramsay’s History of South Carolina.  Newberry, South Carolina: W. J. Duffie, 1858.  2:166.

22.  W. E. McLendon, G. A. Crabb, Earl Carr, and F. S. Welsh.  “Soil Survey of Georgetown County, South Carolina.”  513-562 in Field Operations of the Bureau of Soils, 1911.  Washington, DC: United States Department of Agriculture, 1914.  529-530.

23.  McLendon.  3.
24.  McLendon.  514.
25.  McLendon.  538.

26.  James L. Michie.  “An Initial Archeological Survey of the Wachesaw/Richmond Plantation Property, Georgetown County, South Carolina.”  Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina, The Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, April 1984.  1.

27.  Brown is introduced in the post for 15 December 2022.
28.  McLendon.  517.
29.  McLendon.  517-518.

30.  McLendon.  554.  Cooke classed the soils as Pamlico Formation and said they were “chiefly of fine sand and blue or gray clay.” [36]

31.  Ramsay.  2:152.
32.  McLendon.  520.
33.  Ramsay.  2:112.

34.  Ben Horry.  “Uncle Ben Horry.”  2:219-225 in Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves – South Carolina Narratives.  Compiled by The Library of Congress from interviews by the Works Projects Administration, Federal Writers’ Project.  Washington: Library of Congress, 1941.  2:221-222.

Reprinted in Coming Through: Voices of a South Carolina Gullah Community from WPA Oral Histories Collected by Genevieve W. Chandler, edited by Kincaid Mills, Genevieve C. Peterkin, and Aaron McCollough.  Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press, 2008.  92.

35.  Hagar Doctor Brown.  “Mom Hager.”  Slave Narratives, volume 1.  Reprinted in Coming Through. 17.

John Simmons.  Quoted in Coming Through.  318.

36.  Cooke.  149.