The Park Service acquired South Carolina’s Castle Pinckney National Monument in 1933, but was glad to see it abolished and transferred in the 1950s. Lacking a glorious past, and too expensive to restore, the old island fort now sits rotting in Charleston harbor.

National Lighthouse Day is being observed around the country on August 7, and there are some excellent examples of those beacons in NPS areas. Some parks will host special events this weekend; one of them is more often associated with a famous battle than a lighthouse.

Nephew Brian, a Civil War fan of the first order, was keen to see Fort Sumter. So when he visited me in my South Carolina home, we jumped in my car, drove to Charleston, boarded a boat, and headed into the harbor. And there he saw Fort Sumter.

Battle scenes from the movie “Glory” highlighted Fort Sumter National Monument’s recent commemoration of the 146th anniversary of the assault on Battery Wagner by the 54th Massachusetts, the Civil War’s most famous African American unit. The Atlantic Ocean was not where it was supposed to be, however, and that took a little explaining.

An exhausted pygmy whale and her calf washed ashore last week near Charleston, South Carolina, and had to be euthanized. The mother whale was starving because she swallowed a plastic bag tossed from a boat.

Charleston, South Carolina, was North America’s main port of entry for African slaves, and hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children were quarantined at Sullivan’s Island before being passed along to the slave markets and a life of toil. “African Passage,” an exhibit that will open on March 22 at Fort Moultrie National Monument, will tell this painful story.