Twelve Mile River

About

Twelve Mile Creek, South Carolina — 1775 Battle of Twelve Mile, 1840s-1880s Logging, 1990s-2010s Twelve Mile Trail 50-mi Seneca. The Twelve Mile River is gauged by USGS station 02186000, which records a long-term average flow of 182 cubic feet per second. Paddlers find the river most inviting between 90 and 275 CFS, a window that spans easy low-water floats and fuller, faster runs. Those numbers frame a 23-mile corridor through Pickens County that has been shaped as much by human hands as by rainfall.

The river's defining historical moment came on August 1, 1775, when American militias were ambushed by Cherokee and Loyalist soldiers in the Battle of Twelve Mile Creek. The clash placed the waterway at the edge of the Revolution, on ground that had long been part of the ancestral territory of the Catawba, the Eastern Band of Cherokee, and the Muscogee (Creek). For those peoples the river was a travel corridor, a fishing ground, and a gathering place, and the Catawba Indian Nation, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation maintain cultural connections to it today.

Industry arrived in the late 1800s. The first two dams, Woodside I and II, were built to power the growing mill village of Cateechee, South Carolina, tying the Twelve Mile to the region's Reconstruction-era economy. That hydroelectric infrastructure eventually became a liability. PCB contamination settled into the river's sediment, prompting an EPA Superfund cleanup that ran from 1987 until January 2015, aimed at removing the pollutants and restoring the river's health.

The cleanup reached its turning point in January 2015. Crews removed the contaminated sediment trapped behind Woodside I and II and dismantled both dams. Rather than trucking away every yard of material, the project allowed clean sediment to flow downstream, where it could naturally cap and restore the Twelve Mile arm of Lake Hartwell. The approach turned the river's own current into part of the remedy.

Recovery has continued in the years since. Since 2010, SC DNR, working with the Twelve Mile Watershed partnerships and the Catawba Indian Nation, has addressed more than a century of logging, agricultural, and industrial impacts. Streambank stabilization, native fish restocking that has included redbreast sunfish and shoal bass, and projects under the SC DNR Watershed Restoration Program have all followed. The Twelve Mile drains toward the Savannah River system, and its restored arm now feeds Lake Hartwell with cleaner water than it carried for decades.

Today the river is a Designated Water Trail, with paddlers following the Twelve Mile River Blueway. What was once a polluted stream tied to early American conflict and Reconstruction-era industry has been reborn, a working example of how a damaged Southern river can be brought back.