Elloree Heritage Museum: Everything you need to know

While the Elloree Heritage Museum is nice, it isn’t going to take you all day. So, for some more things to do in the area, check out our 24 Hours In Santee post (Santee, by the way, is the town next to Elloree).

Elloree Heritage Museum: Everything you need to know

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Elloree is a small town in Santee Cooper Country in South Carolina. It’s a town over from Santee, which you may have heard about if you either golf (because it is a large golfing area) or if you’ve driven from New York to Florida down I-95 because it is the halfway point and right off of a highway exit.

But, unless you’re local to the area, or big on horses, you may not have ever heard of Elloree.

Fun fact: The famous racehorse Secretariat’s trainer lived near Elloree. Also, Chris Antley, who won two of the three legs of the Triple Crown in 1999, comes from Elloree.

So, with that being all I knew about the town, I had underwhelming expectations for the town’s museum.

We entered and were given handsets to use on our self-guided tour. Each one had a keypad which you would use to enter the number that corresponded with the display you were looking at. The handset would then narrate that section for you.

Wait, getting a little ahead of myself.

When you walk into the museum, right after the gift shop, you are greeted by an animatronic William J. Snider, founder of Elloree.

You guys. It felt like walking into Disney’s Hall of Presidents. He was life-size and moving and making eye contact while he told the beginning of the story of the town.

From that moment, I knew I had underestimated Elloree.

From there, you walk through Elloree’s commercial district (well, what is was from 1900 to 1920). You start at the barbershop and hear the clinking of scissors and some of the latest town gossip.

Well latest as in 18th century.

You see the replicas of the bank, the general store, a hotel for traveling salesmen, and various other shops that were set up along Cleveland Street — which is still the main thoroughfare in town.

It’s so interesting.

The way that it’s narrated, the way that you’re introduced to these characters, people who really existed over 200 years ago in this town, but are now snippets of script, it’s so good.

You get a feeling for what life was like in Elloree back then. It helps that it’s still a small town, so it doesn’t take that much imagination to put yourself back in time.

A nice time it seems to be.

At least, it seems that way until you get just past the museum’s bathrooms and enter the backyard of a log cabin.

The narration continues there, explaining how laborious it was to get water from the well for laundry. And how long the process of washing children and clothing took.

And, after feeling so much empathy for the mother of the home and such appreciation for the modern convenience of the washing machine and dryer, the narration fades into raindrops.

It’s raining. On the family’s recently washed clothes that are pinned to the clothesline.

It feels like such a punch in the gut and you feel terrible for the family.

And you feel this way because the story is so well done and the narrations are so well spoken. And because of them you feel so invested in the life of the people of Elloree.

We made it through the rain storm and to the porch of Snider Cabin, which we were able to peek inside, before our time was unfortunately interrupted by a tap on our shoulders.

It was nearly time for the oysters to start, and the workers had to claim our headset.

We, of course, obliged. But, we were only halfway through the museum. We didn’t get to the cotton gin, learn anything about the mule named Ruby Doo, or any of the modern day history.

And forget the second floor. We didn’t even know it existed until we were out of time.

The staff was so incredibly gracious, though, and allowed us to go upstairs quickly during the oyster roast to look at the memorabilia of the Elloree Trials that was on the second floor.

We also were able to go to the section where the cotton gin was (you may know that if you saw my happy birthday photo to Pete on Instagram this year) but, without a headset, we just sort of looked at the display and the photos hanging on the wall, but didn’t appreciate them as much as we could have.

And that’s my fault. I misjudged. I’m repeating this numerous times so that you don’t do the same thing I did.

Go to the museum. Go early. Give yourself so much time.

It’s almost unfair that this magnificent museum is in such a small town because the chances of you ever being in Elloree, South Carolina are slim.

Not zero, but slim. You’re probably passing through on your way to somewhere else. And that means you’ll probably miss the museum. And that’s a shame because, like I said, it’s incredible.

The oyster roast was great by the way. It was super bountiful and everyone there ate their fell of oysters and there were still so many left over.

And honestly, I wouldn’t expect anything less from the Elloree Heritage Museum.

Elloree Heritage Museum and Cultural Center: Frequently Asked Questions