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Survey of
Historic Sites and Buildings

	NINTEY SIX NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE South Carolina	Ninety Six NHS
Location: 2-1/2 miles south of present Ninety Six, Greenwood County, on S.C. 246. Ninety Six National Historic Site

Ninety Six began as a trading post in 1730 and continued during the colonial period as an important trading center and seat of justice for much of upcountry South Carolina. The sizable village was fortified during the Cherokee outbreak of 1759-60, and was predominantly Tory as the Revolution came on. Patriot forces were besieged at Ninety Six for 3 days inconclusively in November 1775, but in December the Tories were defeated and dispersed. The British captured Charleston in 1780 and, later in the year, established an outpost and built the Star Fort at Ninety Six. The fort was an earthwork with eight salient and eight reentrant angles, enclosing about one-half an acre northeast of the village. Gen. Nathanael Greene's American force invested and assaulted the fort unsuccessfully in May-June 1781 but withdrew as British reinforcements approached. The British evacuated the fort, however, relinquishing their foothold in inland South Carolina.

The Star Fort outlines are still readily discernible as earthwork embankments 4 or 5 feet high. Scattered brick fragments mark the location of the town, which was burned by the British, later rebuilt, but lost its court in 1800 and declined in importance. Some identifiable remains include the knoll on which the 1775 siege occurred and on which stood the British stockade fort of 1781, the ravine in which flowed the stream supplying water to the garrison, the jail site, the old Charleston Road, and, some distance from the village site, the site of the 1759 fortification. A stone monument stands on S.C. 246 at the junction of a dirt road leading to the fort. At this writing (1961) the Greenwood County Historical Society is negotiating for the property and laying plans for developing the site.

Designated a National Historical Landmark on 11/07/73, it was subsequently established as Ninety Six National Historic Site as part of the National Park System on August 19, 1976, covering over 1,000 acres.