South Carolina Resources
South Carolina is bounded to the north by North Carolina, to the south and west by Georgia, located across the Savannah River, and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. The capital and largest city is Columbia. Other important cities are Charleston, Greenville, Spartanburg, Anderson, Sumter, and Florence. South Carolina is composed of four geographic areas, whose boundaries roughly parallel the northeast/southwest Atlantic coastline. The lower part of the state is the Coastal Plain, which is nearly flat, composed entirely of recent sediments such as sand, silt, and clay. Areas with better drainage make excellent farmland, though some land is swampy. The coastline contains many salt marshes and estuaries, as well as natural ports such as Georgetown and Charleston. An unusual feature of the coastal plain is a large number of Carolina bays, the origins of which are uncertain, though one prominent theory suggests that they were created by a meteor shower. The bays tend to be oval, lining up in a northwest to southeast orientation. Just west of the coastal plain is the Sand Hills region, which is thought to contain remnants of old coastal dunes from a time when the land was sunken, or the oceans were higher.
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