FLORENCE – Buc-ee is king in this corner of rural Florence County. He presides over a tangled maze of cars, from Virginia, New York, Georgia, New Jersey — all there to see a gas station. Teenagers with beach tans and 30-somethings with toddlers get out and stretch their legs.
They take photos of a giant inflatable beaver, beaver bobbleheads, beaver diapers. They bite into smoked meat and caramelized sugar. They hear the cash register sliding open, their coins dropping in, one after another.
A mile away, in the belly of Back Swamp, a spider hesitates at the edge of its web, waiting. A cicada thrums to life. A heron takes flight over groves of hickory and holly, cypress and cedar.
The trees reach up, clogging forest paths, blotting out the sky. Sunlight slants through the shadow, so deep it must hold a secret. On one side of this Interstate 95 interchange is a cluster of businesses anchored by South Carolina’s only Buc-ee’s , a famed tourist attraction that brings millions of people and dollars to Florence.
On the other is a centuries-old community , where generations have raised their families in rural splendor. In the middle are local leaders who have to decide — what does Florence County want to be? At an Aug. 15 meeting, County Council members decided to open the door to development, at least this time.
They allowed developers to rezone a 105-acre property on the other side of the road from Buc-ee’s. The land, filled now with cotton, could soon be paved over. “That was our boundary, and this is why it’s so upsetting,” said Ida Whitehead, who lives less than 2 miles down the road on land her family has owned since the early 1800s.
“Once the floodgates are open, it’s scary.” It’s a dilemma likely to repeat throughout the county as development marches across a region known for its rural roots. County Council members paved the way for more development near Back Swamp even as they preserved 7,600 acres around Snow’s Island and a property containing Burch's Mill, major Revolutionary War sites "Florence County is on the move to correct a fault and to begin to conserve our natural resources,” Council Chair William Schofield said before preserving Snow’s Island in July.
Moments later, he voted to rezone the property across from Buc-ee’s. The seeming contradiction is a sign of how difficult it will be to balance conservation and development as the county tries to grow without losing its identity. Much of Florence County remains rural, and people take pride in the acres of timber, tobacco and cotton that were once staples here.
Yet the county has one of the lowest levels of preservation in the state. That means it could all disappear. Local leaders say they’re committed to conservation.
At the same time, they’re making big bets on attracting new industries they promise will provide good paying jobs. Those industries — and the workers they bring — are gobbling up land. Now, elected officials are working against a ticking clock.
“If we don't protect what we have right now, we may lose that shot at it,” Schofield said. In many ways, Back Swamp is unique. In others, it’s a symbol of what Florence County has to lose as it outgrows its rural roots.
It’s the type of place where cotton fields still blaze white come fall, where old homes stand guard at the end of winding roads, where neighbors stop by for a chat, where you can take a walk outside, close your eyes and travel back in time. Settlers arrived to this informal community in the 1700s. Families whose names are etched in Florence history got their start there: the Brockingtons, McCalls and Ervins, among others.
Some of their descendants are still there. These days, Back Swamp is a scrap of tree-studded land on the border of Florence and Darlington counties. Roughly a dozen of the properties are permanently preserved.
A handful are more developed — a church, an electric cooperative, a research center. Witherspoon Island, at the edge of Back Swamp, is a former Sonoco timber tract that was recently preserved in perpetuity. The people there live a different kind of life — one that was once common across the Pee Dee.
Ida and Alva Whitehead are among dozens of people who have helped fight off development in the area for decades. They’re the seventh generation to live on this land. Their home is a low-slung cabin down a shaded dirt lane.
The Whiteheads’ kids and grandkids live steps away in a white, colonial-style home. Dogs nap in the bushes. A peacock struts across the roof.
Ida Whitehead said she used to invite school groups to the 200-acre property. On one visit, a young boy turned to her in awe. “I’ve never seen so much land where I could just run so far,” he said.
But the existence of such land doesn’t just benefit a lucky few. It’s a boon to the entire community, said Trapper Fowler, a wildlife biologist with the Coastal Conservation League. Fowler has been an outspoken advocate for Back Swamp, speaking against potential development at Florence County Council meetings.
At first, he was skeptical that the area is as special as the Whiteheads and their neighbors claim. Then he visited. “I was just blown away,” he said.
“You don't see things like that much anymore.” Conservation , a legal way of protecting land from development, can take many forms. Sometimes it's public, sometimes it's private.
Sometimes it's an undisturbed swamp, sometimes it's a working farm. But any conservation has benefits, Fowler said. For example, wetlands like Back Swamp are a natural filtration system, improving water quality.
During storms, the area acts as a sponge, soaking up water that would otherwise flood low lying areas. It also provides a haven for endangered plant and animal life. There are cultural benefits to conservation as well, Fowler said.
Ida Whitehead strolls through a boardwalk in Back Swamp Aug. 2. Her family settled in the area in the early 1800s.
Within Back Swamp is the historic Roseville Plantation , one of the largest cemeteries for enslaved Africans in the state, a 100-year old school house, a 100-year old church and more. Those kinds of cultural resources exist across undeveloped areas. Take Snow’s Island: The site of one of Francis Marion’s main camps during the Revolutionary War, archaeologists have spent weeks digging up centuries-old artifacts to learn more about what happened during a pivotal time in American history.
If that land were paved over with concrete, that history would be lost forever, Francis Marion University President Fred Carter said. Carter, an influential voice in Florence County, helped preserve Snow’s Island. “The notion of archaeological exploration, historical preservation .
.. we'll lose the opportunity in a decade from now to do those kinds of things,” Carter said.
Schofield said preserving land is about providing future generations with the opportunities he and others had growing up — hunting, fishing and exploring Florence County’s backcountry. “I just want my grandkids to be able to see and experience and enjoy what I got to experience growing up,” he said. Florence natives speak reverently of the county’s beauty: High bluffs overlooking the Great Pee Dee River, wetlands chock full of rare plants and animals, acres of timberland and cropland marching beside back roads.
Yet little of it is safe from development. Until the purchase of Snow’s Island in July, Florence County had the lowest percentage of conserved land in the Pee Dee. It remains among the counties with the least amount of conservation in South Carolina, both in terms of total acreage and percent conserved, according to data from the South Carolina Conservation Bank .
Lyles Cooper, Executive Director of the Pee Dee Land Trust, said the region generally lags behind other areas of the state in terms of land preservation, though different counties can vary widely. That could be about to change. In 2023, the paper and packaging company Sonoco suddenly announced it planned to sell off its South Carolina timberland .
Roughly 55,000 acres across the state — prime forest, ripe for conservation, much of it in the Pee Dee — was up for sale. At the time, it was worth $72 million. Carter said he began poring over the maps when he learned of the sale.
He couldn’t believe the tracts of land that were now on the table. Snow’s Island is a former Sonoco timber tract. So is Witherspoon Island, another historic property that was recently conserved in Darlington County.
It sits at the edge of Back Swamp. Those two properties are just the first of what Cooper hopes are many future conservation projects on former Sonoco land. “There's a lot of very positive things in the works with Florence County, and I think we're going to see more and more investment in land protection in the coming years,” she said.
Story continues below The state is pushing to make conservation a priority across South Carolina as well. Gov. Henry McMaster has made it a goal to double the amount of conserved land in the Palmetto State.
The Office of Resilience has identified conservation as key to flood mitigation. Legislators have dedicated millions in funding for preservation work. Schofield said it’s the perfect storm — available land from Sonoco, support from the state and local interest.
Florence County may not have this opportunity again, he said. In the eye of a developer, the Buc-ee’s interchange could be so much more. Imagine it — a hub of business, with industrial parks on one side and tourist attractions on the other.
Thousands of people stopping each day, supporting hundreds of jobs and contributing millions in tax dollars. Gary Finklea sees the development of the Interstate 95 interchange as the natural next step in Florence’s evolution. Buc-ee's sits just off of Interstate 95, attracting people and tax dollars to Florence County.
Finklea is a developer. He’s also the lawyer for Jim Poston, the Florence businessman poised to purchase the property across from Buc-ee’s for development. In an interview, Poston said he has sympathy for the Back Swamp community, but he argued it makes sense to develop the land given the number of commercial businesses nearby.
He also pointed out that the land is agricultural, not an undisturbed woodland or pristine wetland. “It's an area prime for development. It makes all the sense in the world to develop it,” Poston said.
The development of the I-95 interchange is just one part of a wave of growth across Florence. That growth, local leaders say, is necessary. Florence needs to attract new businesses to avoid fading away like the Pee Dee’s other rural counties .
It needs to build affordable housing to accommodate a growing population. “What does it provide for the county?” Poston said as he considered how to balance development and conservation. “As far as economic development, jobs, education, skill sets, better life for people? It's a lot to it.
It's not a simple yes or no answer.” But that growth also means rural land is disappearing. That’s true across South Carolina.
The Palmetto State is the fastest growing state in the nation. If current trends hold, South Carolina, along with other Southeastern states, is projected to experience some of the most significant losses in farmland, according to a 2023 study by the American Farmland Trust . Most of that growth is centered in places like Charleston, Myrtle Beach and Greenville.
But Florence is growing too. In response, advocates have been scrambling to preserve rural areas before it’s too late. “There's a lot of people moving to South Carolina.
More than ever before. So I think the time is now to conserve land, before we don't have any land left to conserve," Fowler said. Fowler and Cooper (who isn't taking a side in the Back Swamp dispute) emphasized that they’re not opposed to development.
They recognize that there’s a need for growth. But they believe that growth should be planned and balanced. “We're not anti-development, we're just pro-planning,” Cooper said.
“Conservation is really the balance to our need of economic advancement and development, being able to protect those resources that we're going to need in the future.” Cooper said land conservation has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s in part due to the push from the state to increase conservation.
It’s also because growth has inundated South Carolina. More development often encourages more preservation, Cooper said. People tend to take for granted that their land will stay the same.
That changes when a sign for a new subdivision pops up next door. Schofield said he wants to preserve 30 percent of land in Florence County. That's compared to the less than 4 percent that is preserved now.
He acknowledged that’s an ambitious goal — maybe not one he’ll be able to see in his lifetime. Yet he also said the county can’t conserve everything. Elected officials, developers and community members have some decisions to make.
As community members, developers and elected officials spent the past five months debating whether or not to continue development across from Buc-ee’s, dozens of people showed up to meetings to either celebrate or criticize the plan. On Aug. 15, just a handful of people were left to watch County Council finally put the issue to rest.
Without discussion, council members voted 6-1 to approve the rezoning. Alva Whitehead stood. He turned, silently, and walked out of the room.
Later, he said the community's efforts over the past five months seemed to fall on deaf ears. It’s just a small step for the area, but for the Whiteheads and their neighbors, it’s a symbol of the direction the county is taking. They fear that more properties will soon fall.
"We were told 'the ship has sailed' from day one," Whitehead said. "..
. We never really had a chance to change that predetermined decision." Poston emphasized that he has no immediate plans to develop the lot.
Whatever is done will be done “tastefully,” he said. At the same meeting, the county announced that it had plans to preserve yet another Revolutionary War property, and that work would soon begin to turn Independence Farms — another property conserved in 2023 — into a recreation hub. But it takes money.
And it takes willing landowners. Despite Schofield’s stated enthusiasm for conservation, he said he respects property rights and won’t pressure anyone to conserve their properties. Yet there’s little incentive for developers not to develop the land, Finklea said.
After all, if you buy a property, why not do everything you can to get a return on your investment? While Finklea said he supports conservation, it shouldn’t be on developers to make it happen. “To me, local developers like to contribute, like to give back. We live here, we work here, we go to church here, we raise our families here, we go to school here.
We try to leave a good footprint,” Finklea said. “But we can't go broke buying all the shoes, so to speak.” Poston said he’s a supporter of conservation too.
He lives on 200 forested acres, and he enjoys flying his personal plane above the treetops, looking out across the coastal plain. Poston once had to decide whether or not to conserve land under his care. Years ago, he and his brother owned another property near what would become Buc-ee’s.
At the time, it was undeveloped, and he enjoyed exploring the vast forestland. He considered permanently conserving it. But when Poston’s brother died unexpectedly, he felt he had no choice but to sell it for his brother’s wife and kids, he said.
Now, the land is the site of the MPD Electric Cooperative, a gleaming two-story headquarters with trucks traveling in and out a few times each day. Back Swamp is an informal community in northern Florence County that was established hundreds of years ago. It remains a bastion of rural land.
Again and again, developers, community members and elected officials are facing decisions like these. The pressure is greatest in the areas in and around Florence. Both Mayor Teresa Myers Ervin and Lethonia “Peaches” Barnes, who will take over as mayor in December, say sustainability and green space is a priority in the city.
“I don't want conservation and growth to be in competition,” Barnes said. “We have examples of other cities and towns that have outgrown conservation. And so I'm thankful that we have the opportunity to actually put our priorities straight before we grow.
” Barnes and Schofield said they couldn’t be precise about what a healthy mix would look like, though. “You want me to tell you my dreams?” Schofield asked. He sat up a little straighter as he spoke.
He painted a picture of a park in downtown Florence — a whole city block filled with old oak trees swaying in the wind, a pond surrounded by studying students. He sees new buildings bordering the park, with windows looking out onto the city. He painted a picture of kids outside of Florence still being able to scramble along the bluffs of the Great Pee Dee River years in the future.
They might stumble on something stuck in the dirt — a shark tooth, an ancient knife, a colonial coin. They might claw it free, and hold it up in the sunlight, and grin triumphantly. But those are just his dreams.
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