Reconstruction Era National Historical Park

National park dedicated to the post–Civil War Reconstruction Era — the first of its kind

The Reconstruction Era National Historical Park is centred on Beaufort because the Sea Islands were, in effect, the laboratory for Reconstruction. After Union forces took the islands in 1861, the formerly enslaved population farmed the land, built schools, and elected officials years before the rest of the South — a brief experiment in Black self-governance that the country then walked away from.

The park's main visitor centre is in the old firehouse on Craven Street. Exhibits cover the Port Royal Experiment, the Penn School on St. Helena Island (a separate site nearby that is also part of the park), Black Reconstruction-era politicians from the region, and the violent rollback that ended the period. It is a small, sober museum, but it sits at the centre of a story that this town tells better than anywhere else in the country.

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A story
The park was created by presidential proclamation in 2017, making it the first unit in the National Park System dedicated to the Reconstruction period — a chapter of American history that had previously gone almost entirely uncommemorated nationally.