Ravenwood Plantation

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Ravenwood Plantation is a historic rice plantation in Colleton County, South Carolina. The historic ricefields and associated agricultural features of Ravenwood Plantation are significant as exceptionally intact examples of resources associated with the inland rice culture of the South Carolina lowcountry, which flourished from the earliest years of the Carolina colony until the early nineteenth century and in some areas until the mid-nineteenth century. While the usually larger-scale, more successful, and certainly better-known tidal ricefields which produced the rice known as “Carolina Gold” have gained more attention, the inland ricefields are significant both in their own right and as a counterpoint to the tidal rice culture. Ravenwood is an approximately 325 acre (1.3 km²) tract containing historic inland ricefields and featuring intact and easily discernible canals, dikes, and a reserve. Two sets of three distinct fields each flank the east and west banks of Chessey Creek, with a reserve on the upper east side. These ricefields, whose period of significance dates from circa 1800 to circa 1860, are small and feature low, narrow dikes in comparison to the usually larger tidal ricefields, and are now in a tupelo/cypress swamp. Ravenwood Plantation was listed in the National Register May 1, 1997.^[1].