Best trails in Congaree National Park
Congaree National Park preserves the largest old-growth bottomland hardwood forest in the U.S., rich with champion trees like towering loblolly pines and ancient bald cypress draped in moss. Explore via the accessible 2.4-mile Boardwalk Loop or via longer forest and canoe trails through floodplain pathways. Paddlers can journey Cedar Creek or the Congaree River and book primitive backcountry campsites by permit. Wildlife includes deer, otters, birds and amphibians. The Harry Hampton Visitor Center offers parking, exhibits and trail info.
Top trails
Visitor info
No entrance fee or pass is required.
Join millions of people who enjoy our National Parks with the "America the Beautiful" National Park & Federal Recreational Lands Pass, otherwise known as the Interagency Annual Pass. The pass is valid for a year's worth of visits from the month of purchase at more than 2,000 federal recreation sites across the country.
Congaree National Park does not charge an entrance fee, but the Interagency Access Pass allows pass holders to receive a 50% discount on other park amenities, such as camping.
The Harry Hampton Visitor Center is accessible to visitors using mobility equipment or strollers and has wheelchair accessible restrooms and drinking fountains.
A braille brochure, one standard-sized wheelchair, two large wheelchairs, and three Hippocampe all-terrain wheelchairs are available on a first-come-first-serve basis. Kayak adaptations, including a back-of-hand adaptation, a wrist slide adaptation, and a paddle pivot, are also available on a first-come-first-serve basis. Please call ahead or ask at the visitor center to make a reservation for equipment. If you are scheduled for a canoe tour and need an adaptation, please let the park know 24 hours before your tour.
Additional information about accessibility at Congaree National Park can be found on their website: https://www.nps.gov/cong/planyourvisit/accessibility.htm.
The Harry Hampton Visitor Center is accessible to visitors using mobility equipment or strollers and has wheelchair accessible restrooms and drinking fountains.
The picnic area near the first parking area has 4 wheelchair accessible tables with packed, level paths and surfaces.
Longleaf Campground Campground has 1 individual wheelchair accessible camping site ( #1) and wheelchair accessible vault toilets.
Service animals must be on-leash throughout the park.
Trail reviews for Congaree National Park
We hiked to Weston Lake via the Weston Lake Loop Trail at Congaree National Park. We accessed the trail from the Boardwalk Loop Trail at the park. It is our second favorite trail in the park, and a detour we highly recommend from the Boardwalk Loop Trail if the tide and trail conditions allow. I highly recommend checking the tide chart at the Harry Hampton Visitor Center before going on this trail as it can become flooded. We saw three alligators on our hike.
Awesome coming back to congaree national park. Did most of the boardwalk loop and some of the firefly trail.
First time to visit Congaree National Park and it was exactly what I expected. A lovely quiet walk through a flooded forest with Loblolly Pines. Reaching as high as 160 feet! The boardwalk part of this hike is fairly fairly simple. Once the boardwalk ends where the construction begins you take a right and you head out on this trail which will give you a lot more seclusion than the boardwalk does. Most visitors here seem to be flocking to just the boardwalk area. Find one of these trails that ends at the boardwalk and continues on into what would be called the backcountry here. The trail is flat as can be, I don’t know why my elevation said I had 1000 feet there was nowhere near that, and is fairly wide and is soft dirt with no rocks to trip on. The only thing you’re going to trip on our roots from the trees. Lots of birds singing in the air and woodpeckers searching for grubs in the trees. I didn’t see any other animals like snakes, gators, bears, deer, et cetera. The only other mammal I saw were squirrels everywhere. I ended the trail by doing the firefly trail which was quite interesting as the fireflies were out hovering around the ground and making all sorts of noise that I thought they were bees, but it’s fireflies. Kind of cool to see them during the daytime. I gave this trail five stars because it’s everything that a national park trail should be when it’s trying to educate you as to why this place was designated and national park. This trail gives you a very good sense of the environment, the vegetation, the creeks and rivers and swamps,and wildlife such as birds.
This was our first time visiting Congaree National Park and we had the most wonderful experience. We took it slow and did the easy boardwalk trail. Unfortunately, due to recent rain, the trail was half through under water. We took a side trail (Firefly) to get in a few more views of the park. Definitely hope to come back and do some of the more intense trails in the future!
Congaree national Park got here and must’ve rained a lot. All the trails were closed except for a few so I got the closest hike in and then added a couple bits and pieces of other trails area.
A lovely day at the mystical old Congaree. Bring bug spray but spray up in the parking lot to conserve fireflies.