General Greene Tree

From the small Bates Ferry trailhead lot, follow the old roadbed for about 0.4 mile. Take the spur on the right and cross the steel-deck flatbed trailer bridge over Bates Old River. Continue across the slough; when the path bends left, look to your right for the tree. The spur is easy to miss, and you'll retrace your route to get back.

This low, unimproved trail can be wet or overgrown, and flooding can hide washed-out ground. If water covers the path beyond the bridge, turn back rather than stepping into unseen washouts. Check park conditions before setting out.

The trunk is about 30 feet around, with a knee rising roughly 8 feet from the floodplain. Look at the wide base and the cypress knees around it; they make the tree's scale easier to read than a close view of bark alone.

The tree's center is hollow and its crown is broken. Those flaws made it poor lumber and helped it escape the logging that removed many other large cypress in the region. South Carolina recognized it as a Heritage Tree in 2018. Its exact age is unknown because the hollow trunk makes it impossible to count its rings.

Two huge cut baldcypress stumps stand nearby. They are a reminder of the cypress logging that once reshaped this floodplain.

The tree is named for Nathanael Greene, the Revolutionary War general who met Francis Marion at nearby McCord's Ferry after the Battle of Fort Motte. The name links this quiet pocket of forest to the people who moved through the river corridor.

Bates Ferry was part of a historic Camden-to-Charleston route before bridges replaced the crossing. Bates Ferry Trail follows an old road and causeway through the floodplain. Bates Old River is a former Congaree channel, left isolated after the 1852 flood.

For a photo, include the tree's flared base and one of the nearby cut stumps if you can see both from the path. That gives the trunk scale and puts the surviving tree beside the logging history around it.