The sweetgrass basket stands along U.S. 17 north of Mount Pleasant are roadside booths where Gullah Geechee basket makers have sold coiled grass baskets since the 1930s. In 2006 the South Carolina General Assembly asked the state Department of Transportation to sign U.S. 17 North from Venning Road to Sewee Road as the Sweetgrass Basket Makers Highway, and the same year the sweetgrass basket became the official state Lowcountry handcraft. According to the South Carolina Encyclopedia, the Lowcountry coiled basket grew up alongside rice cultivation, and a wide winnowing tray called a fanner, common to both Senegambia and South Carolina, separated the rice grain from its chaff.
The turn to sweetgrass began in the vicinity of Boone Hall Plantation. Around 1916 a King Street merchant, Clarence W. Legerton, arranged with Sam Coakley, an elder in the Black community, to buy baskets in quantity for his shop and for department stores in northern cities. Once Highway 17 was paved and the Cooper River Bridge opened in 1929, basket makers sold directly to motorists, first from chairs and overturned crates and then from wooden stands built for the purpose.
About 60 stands lined the route when the widening of U.S. 17 North was planned in 2011, and the town created a Sweetgrass Basket Overlay District that credits owners who build stands with safe parking. In 2021 the town's Culture, Arts, and Pride Commission announced a project to restore four stands directly across U.S. 17 from the Boone Hall entrance.
Getting there
32.8505, -79.8055
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