People who live in Florence use the words "Pee Dee" constantly. It's in the name of the region, the hospital, the radio stations, the nonprofits, the schools. It's in the way people describe where they're from when they're talking to someone who's never heard of Florence. It's been there so long that most people stopped noticing it.
The actual river, though. The water. Most people who carry the name around every day have never stood on its banks.
The Great Pee Dee begins as the Yadkin River in the mountains of Blowing Rock, North Carolina, and travels more than 230 miles before it becomes the Pee Dee just south of the state line near Cheraw. From there it runs south through Chesterfield, Marlboro, Darlington, Florence, Marion, Williamsburg, and Georgetown counties before emptying into Winyah Bay on the South Carolina coast. It is not a small river. It is wide, dark, slow-moving in places, and in the sections that run through and below Florence County, it is largely wild.
In 2002, the lower 70-mile stretch of the Great Pee Dee was designated a State Scenic River, running from the US Highway 378 bridge between Florence and Marion Counties all the way to Winyah Bay in Georgetown County. The river floodplain contains large acreages of wild and undeveloped forestland, wetlands, and open waters, and the free-flowing, unaltered river system is an important habitat for resident and migratory fish species. It is one of the few major river systems in the Southeast that has not been dammed in South Carolina, which means it still moves the way rivers are supposed to move.
The scenic corridor holds 120 species of fish, at least 25 rare plant species, several endangered and threatened species, nearly every species of duck native to the state, and a wide range of wading birds and fur-bearing species. Bald eagles pass through. So do swallow-tailed kites.
None of that is more than thirty minutes from downtown Florence.
The name comes from the people who were here first. The Pee Dee region takes its name from the Pee Dee Indians and the two major rivers that run through it: the Great Pee Dee and the Little Pee Dee. The Pee Dee people were part of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture, occupying this land for centuries before European contact. By the early 1700s, following a series of wars and pressures from surrounding tribes and colonial forces, the Pee Dee had largely dispersed. What remained was their name on the water and, eventually, on everything that grew around it.
Florence itself came later, built at a railroad junction in the pine forest in the early 1850s. The city was a railroad town before it was anything else. But the river had been shaping this region for far longer than any train line, and it continued to do so in ways that the city's founders could not have entirely anticipated.
During the Civil War, the Confederacy chose Mars Bluff on the Great Pee Dee as the site for an inland naval shipyard, specifically because the river offered both access to the coast via Georgetown and protection from Union blockades at the ports. The largest vessel constructed there was the 150-foot wooden gunship CSS Peedee, built to patrol the river against Union forces and defend Confederate territories along the Atlantic seacoast. The ship was launched in January 1865. The following month, with Union troops advancing through South Carolina, the crew scuttled it themselves to prevent capture, burning the vessel and pushing its three cannons into the river.
The cannons stayed at the bottom of the Pee Dee for 150 years.
In September 2015, a team of underwater archaeologists from the University of South Carolina raised the three cannons from the river bottom near Florence. After years of conservation at Clemson University's Warren Lasch Conservation Center in Charleston, the guns went on permanent display in 2019 at the Florence County Veterans Affairs Center. They are there now, available to see, recovered from a river that most of the people who drive past the Veterans Affairs building every day have never visited.
That is a very Florence story.
The most accessible way into the river and its surrounding landscape is Lynches River County Park, about twenty minutes south of Florence on US 52. The 676-acre park, part of the Lynches River County Park system featured in our disc golf community coverage, sits on Lynches River in the Pee Dee region and features river swamp with towering cypress trees, sand hills, and a wide variety of vegetation. The park offers canoe and kayak rentals launching from a handicap-accessible boat launch, hiking along historic trails, geocaching, fishing, archery, a climbing wall, and the Environmental Discovery Center, a LEED certified nature center with live animals and hands-on exhibits. There is a tree canopy walk. There are cabins available for overnight stays.
It is not undiscovered. But it is underused, particularly by people who live in Florence proper and think of it as something for out-of-town visitors.
More than 175 bird species have been recorded at Lynches River, including the Prothonotary Warbler and Swainson's Warbler. The spring and fall migrations bring species through the Pee Dee corridor that most people in this region would not expect to find within driving distance of their house.
From Cheraw, the Pee Dee flows 203 more miles before reaching the coast, 70 of which carry the State Scenic designation, winding through cypress-tupelo swamps and old rice fields. During colonial times, the river served as a trade route between the Lowcountry and the interior. Rice plantations lined its banks. The water carried goods, people, and history in both directions for generations before anyone thought to put a railroad junction in the pine forest nine miles south of Darlington.
People who are new to Florence often ask what makes this place different from other mid-sized Southern cities. It's a fair question, and the answers people usually give involve the hospital, the interstate access, the cost of living, the schools.
The river rarely comes up.
But the Pee Dee is part of what makes this region a distinct place rather than just a geography. It runs through the history here the way rivers run through history everywhere, quietly and continuously, indifferent to what gets built on its banks. The city grew up beside it. The name stuck. The water kept moving.
Most of it is still out there, largely undisturbed, within an easy drive of wherever you're reading this.
Know a spot along the Pee Dee or Lynches River that more Florence residents should know about? Tell us.