Hampton Park is a public park located in peninsular Charleston, South Carolina, United States. At 60 acres (240,000 m2), it is the largest park on the peninsula. It is bordered by The Citadel to the west, Hampton Park Terrace to the south, North Central to the east, and Wagener Terrace to the north. The park is named in honor of Confederate General Wade Hampton III who, at the time of the Civil War, owned one of the largest collections of slaves in the South. After the Civil War, Hampton became a proponent of the Lost Cause movement, member of the Red Shirts and governor of South Carolina.
History
Colonial era The land constituting current-day Hampton Park was, by 1769, part of a plantation owned by John Gibbes and known as The Grove or Orange Grove Plantation.
Race course In 1835, part of Gibbes' plantation was acquired by the South Carolina Jockey Club, a group that developed the Washington Race Course on the site. An annual horse race in February attracted thousands of spectators who could watch the races from an Italianate grandstand designed by Charles F. Reichardt. Today, Mary Murray Drive is a 1-mile (1.6 km) parkway that circles Hampton Park in almost the exact location of the race track. The Civil War caused a steep loss in the number of thoroughbred horses, and the following economic decline during the Reconstruction Era made horse racing less economically viable. The South Carolina Jockey Club eventually was disbanded in 1899.
Union cemetery During the closing days of the American Civil War, the area was used as a prisoner-of-war camp. More than two hundred Union soldiers died in the camp and were buried in a mass grave at the site.
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