Charleston, SC Day 2

For our second day in Charleston, we took a walking tour of the historic areas next to the Charleston Harbor.  Originally Charles Town, for King Charles in the 1600’s, Charleston was always a very busy seaport. It has three forts guarding the entry into the harbor.  The original city had a thick wall, none of which can be seen anymore. It is buried under the streets. 

There was a historic fire station next to the Old Slave Mart.  Our guide told us that people could buy fire insurance for their homes.  Then, when there was a fire, the home with the insurance medallion on the front of the house got the firemen’s attention.  Or, if a house on fire was next door to one with the insurance medallion, then it would get the firemen’s attention too.

Historic Fire Station to the left of the Old Slave Mart


Fire Insurance Medallion

We also found out that Charleston had an earthquake after the Civil War in 1886 that would have measured 7 on the Richter Scale, if Richter had been born yet. As you can imagine, it damaged many of the homes. Their solution was to put earthquake bolts (tie rods) through the homes to hold them up. Unfortunately, if another earthquake comes, the houses are so rigid, that they will just fall over.  You can see one end of the bolt on each side of the house.  They are the round things at the top of each story of the house

The ends of the tie rods holding the house together after the 1886 earthquake.


By the way, this pink house is the oldest surviving house in Charleston, built in 1694.  
It also has the earthquake bolts on the side of it.

We got an education that we weren’t expecting


As you can see from the pictures, there are many horses and carriages on the streets of Charleston.  They are mainly used for tours of the city.  While we were waiting for our ride at a traffic light intersection, a horse across the intersection decided that since he was stopped for the light, that he would go ahead and pee.  Normal behavior, right?  However, Charleston is on top of it.  No later than five minutes after, a truck arrived from (and I’m not kidding 😂) “Doody Calls, Equine Sanitation”.  

Doody Calls, Equine Sanitation

They had two opaque tanks on the back of the vehicle with light blue liquid in it.  One guy got out (the vehicle had white and yellow strobe lights for safety) and he proceeded to wash all of the pee off the road and down the storm system.  We couldn’t believe how fast and efficient this was.  Also, all of the horses each had a bag under its tail to catch the other stuff.  And we never saw any horse mess on the roads in the two days we were there.  

We went down to Charleston’s riverfront area. It is built on top of the trash that sailing ships unloaded so they could take on cargo.  This included ballast, or the stones that they used to pave the streets.  

Charleston Riverfront



Quite a way up one of the streets next to the water and park, we saw this mooring post for ships. It’s a mooring post they they used to tie the ships to so they could be unloaded and reloaded. It shows how far out into the water that the trash went.

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