At Hilton Pond near York, my wife and sons and I imagine ourselves country folk leading idyllic rural lives. In 1982 we purchased our old farmhouse and 12 acres replete with pond, abandoned fields, shrubland, a hardwood stand, red cedars, a variety of pine trees, and a large lawn that has gotten smaller each year.

This modest parcel of land is a sort of replica of the entire Piedmont of South Carolina, since it has on it many representative plants and animals and habitats that we associate with that portion of the state. The Hilton Pond property also has an awful lot of "red dirt."

Our soil, like that of the rest of the Piedmont, is mostly poor, and it gives me a good excuse not to garden. Certainly the red clay of the Carolinas and Georgia is one of the most startling and memorable sights for Northerners and Westerners who visit the Southeast for the first time. Historically, however, Piedmont land was among the richest in North America. Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, most parts of the Piedmont were covered by SIX FEET or more of black, rich topsoil. Today a farmer is exceptionally lucky if he has any land with SIX INCHES of fertile soil above the clay.

This red clay that underlays our yards and businesses in York County hasn't always been here. Some of it came from the ancient, towering Appalachian
Mountains a hundred miles or more to the west. As long as 200 million years ago when those mountains were finally formed, rains immediately began eroding them away, sweeping them eastward toward the sea. As the mountains wore down, the rivers flowed more slowly, and iron-laden red clay was deposited throughout the Piedmont.

Nonetheless, geologists think that most of our red clay "weathered out" of the bedrock beneath it. That is, various chemical and physical processes broke down the underlying rock, forming clay particles that could attract and hold substantial amounts of water. Regardless of red clay's origins, plants eventually took root and enriched it, building up that six feet of fertile organic topsoil.

When Europeans arrived and cleared woodlands to farm, they slashed and burned vast expanses of trees. Often, as tree roots rotted, there was little to anchor topsoil in place, and some of it washed away with every rain. This devastating process nearly reached a point of no-return in the 1930's, when much of York County was covered by deep gullies and bare red clay. Amazingly, less than 300 years of intensive corn and cotton farming had eliminated tens of thousands of years' worth of natural soil building.

Fortunately, the Soil Conservation Service showed farmers how to contour plow and dam gullies to make ponds, and the last 40 years have seen major slowing of the soil-depletion trend. Today's farmers plant soybeans to put nitrogen into the soil and rotate their crops to allow nutrients to build up from year to year. (The ubiquitous kudzu was instrumental in reclaiming badly eroded hillsides, but some people think it did too good a job.)

Despite all these measures, there are very few Piedmont farmers who can plant any crop without a substantial dose of artificial fertilizer added to that Carolina red clay. And unfortunately, in western York County near Hickory Grove, Sharon, and Bullocks Creek there are still deep, red gouges in the earth that probably never will be reclaimed to farming.

Throughout the Piedmont frustrated mothers curse red dirt as it gets dragged onto shag carpets or ground into the bluejeans of children at play. Rug cleaning firms and detergent manufacturers reap the benefits of 300 years of unwise farming practices, while farmers spend even more money and energy to rebuild soil once enriched by plants, fungi, and earthworms who did all it for free.

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Back to Piedmont Naturalist Volume 1 (1986)