Black Sands

Seabrook is known for its three miles of pristine beaches and the sustainable management of this precious natural resource. But what about the black streaks and clumps that mark our otherwise white sand coastline?

They're evidence of a valuable mineral resource hidden in the sand - titanium, a metallic element found in minerals contained in ancient deposits of soil and rock ground over millennia to form our sands. While our beaches contain only trace amounts, so-called heavy metal beaches in Virginia and Florida are among those mined around the world for titanium, used widely in the aerospace industry for its light weight but high tensile strength. Those same qualities make it useful for joint replacement surgery, dental implants, and everything from bicycles to golf clubs. The United States is a major world supplier of the stuff, with mines in seven states.

Titanium was first described in the late 18th-century, when a curious clergyman wondered about the magnetic qualities of the sand he found on the beaches of Cornwall in southwest England. Extracted and purified some years later by a German chemist, it was declared a new element and slotted into the periodic table as the ninth most abundant mineral on earth, named titanium after the giant gods of Greek mythology.

About 65% of refined titanium is used by the aerospace industry for jet engines, wings and fuselages; the remaining 35% is used for medical purposes and in the manufacture of sporting goods, from golf clubs to tennis racquets, skis and baseball bats. Its resistance to corrosion makes it an important component of ship propellers and hulls. It even shows up in fireworks, where it produces silvery white sparks against the night sky. So the next time you're out on the golf course, on the tennis court or enjoying a day on the water, thank those black beach sands for making it all possible.

The Basin Buffer

After the recent heavy rains that swept the Lowcountry, we can be glad of one of our favorite areas visited on our SINHG Trip schedule - the ACE Basin. This 350,000-acre estuary, less than an hour's drive south on Savannah Highway, serves as a huge sponge to absorb and store rainwater, just as our local marshes do to a lesser degree. The basin's acronymn is derived from the Ashepoo, Combahee and Edisto rivers which flow through the area before merging to form St. Helena Sound near Beaufort. The scores of secondary tidal creeks and tributaries that thread through this critical environment are popular kayaking sites for SINHG members, thanks to the 23 boat landings that dot this largely undeveloped area.

Known for its pristine marshes, wetlands, hardwood forests and riverine flora and fauna, the Basin's protected status is thanks to the efforts of combined public and private entities that, during the 1970's and 1980's, worked to secure funding, including more than $50 million in federal support for conservation efforts to maintain a healthy ecosystem under the guidance of the ACE Basin Task Force. The Ernest F. Hollings National Wildlife Refuge is one of many great locations for wildlife viewing, hiking and fishing. Learn more here, and join one of our kayaking trips for a unique Lowcountry perspective.

A First Month's Firsts

courtesy Post and Courier

Charleston can claim quite a few firsts in its three-hundred years as the anchor of the Lowcountry, and this month marks two of them - the founding of the Museum of Charleston as "America's First Museum", and The Post & Courier, the South's oldest daily newspaper (shown above after the 1886 earthquake).

Thompson Hall, the Museum's home in 1910

The Museum claims the older heritage, tracing its roots to January of 1773, when the 19 men who had established the Charleston Library Society thirty years earlier voted to expand their collection of books and manuscripts imported from Britain to focus on the natural history of the Carolinas. Despite the lack of a permanent home and a disastrous 1778 fire, the museum eventually found its first home in 1852 in the College of Charleston's Randolph Hall. By then, renowned naturalist Louis Agassiz visited the city and declared the Museum's collections to be among the best in the country. Surviving the destruction of the Civil War (much of the collection was moved to the Midlands), the Museum was officially incorporated in 1915 and marked another first when, in 1920, it named Laura Bragg as the country's first woman to lead a publicly supported museum. Many of the items from the Museum's early years can be seen today at the Museum's permanent home since 1980, on Meeting Street.

The Museum's peripatetic history was recorded by an upstart newspaper, The Charleston Courier, which published its first edition in January of 1803 under the leadership of editor Aaron Willington, a newspaperman who had moved to the city from Massachusetts. Determined to make The Charleston Courier the newspaper of record for the city, Willington was known to row out to ships arriving in Charleston Harbor from all over the world to scoop the latest international news, and was the first to hire a translator to comb Spanish language newspapers from the Caribbean. Just after the Civil War, Willington's newspaper merged with The Charleston Daily News to become The News and Courier. It continued under that name until 1991, when it merged with the city's only other paper, The Evening Post, to become The Post and Courier, now South Carolina's largest newspaper.