Harbison State Forest just got 71 acres bigger, and a scrappy band of Columbia volunteers helped make it happen. The land deal, known as the Lost Creek Project, closed with contributions from Friends of Harbison State Forest, Richland County and a cycling club, giving the East Coast's largest active working forest within city limits room to grow for the first time in decades.
A Years-Long Deal Finally Closes
According to The Columbia Star, the acquisition gives Harbison State Forest room to grow after Congaree Land Trust acquired the purchasing contract for the property from Family Land LLC, which had offered the land for $1,433,000. Congaree Land Trust and the South Carolina Forestry Commission combined forces with other conservation groups to pull off the purchase, the paper reports. The deal had been in the works for some time — Dianne Perdue-Shupe and Louis Krause discussed the hoped-for acquisition in an August interview, per the same account.
Money for the purchase came from several directions. The South Carolina Conservation Bank awarded Congaree Land Trust a $1,345,500 acquisition grant, and the South Carolina Forestry Commission secured a Land and Water Conservation Fund grant — administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior — to reimburse half that amount, or $672,750, the Star reports. Richland County's Conservation Commission donated $75,000, the Midlands chapter of the Southern Off-Road Bicycle Association kicked in $7,500, and Friends of Harbison State Forest itself contributed $5,000, according to the same report.
Why Visitors Won't See New Trails Yet
Stuart White said the nonprofit needed additional state funding for the complicated purchase, and separately said the new property needs significant management work before new trails can be considered, per the Star's reporting. Visitors cannot ride or hike the newly acquired acreage this season, the outlet notes, even though plans for the new acreage are being finalized and work is expected to begin soon.
That caution echoes a related account from the Post and Courier, which reported that the land adjacent to the forest was clear-cut in 2017 and left to natural regeneration — meaning it will take real work before it can support new trails. That outlet also reported the South Carolina Joint Bond Review Committee approved the first phase of the project in October 2025, with the full acquisition process estimated to wrap up around November 2026.
A Nonprofit Built Around One Forest
Friends of Harbison State Forest is a nonprofit founded to preserve and promote the recreational and educational aspects of the forest, and it is staffed entirely by volunteers, according to the Star's reporting. John McKenzie noted that Harbison is the only one of the state's five forests with an organization like Friends, the paper reports, underscoring how unusual the group's role is. Friends uses membership fees for construction, maintenance and fundraising projects, and offers members sponsor-business discounts and a monthly newsletter, with corporate sponsors including Cycle Center, Fleet Feet, Half Moon Outfitters, Mast General Store, OutSpokin' Bicycles and REI Columbia.
The group's fingerprints are all over the forest's recent upgrades. Friends has helped fund parking lot expansions, ADA-accessible facilities, informational kiosks and trail rerouting, and it maintains the trail system through volunteer trail days, per the Star. The group also helped reroute Lost Creek Trail and added an ADA trail along with informational signage, the paper reports. Harbison's main parking lot has doubled in size, with funding help from Representative Beth Bernstein, and the Richland County Conservation Commission has an active grant to double the size of the Midlands Mountain parking lot as well, with that project scheduled for completion in 2027.
Bridges, Bicycles and a History Rooted in Pittsburgh
The volunteer muscle behind Harbison's infrastructure showed up clearly in 2020, when Friends of Harbison State Forest volunteers numbered, mapped and analyzed all 41 bridges in the forest, according to the Star's reporting. Four Boy Scouts of America members organized volunteer teams to repair four of those bridges as Eagle Scout projects, backed by a $6,000 grant from the Richland County Conservation Commission, and the project was completed with 88 volunteers logging more than 800 service hours, the paper reports. John McKenzie said the grant project used volunteers and Eagle Scouts to improve access to community green space, per the same account.
Harbison's roots stretch back nearly a century. The land was purchased by the Presbyterian Church USA's Board of Ministries during the Great Depression in the late 1920s, with the tract including 6,000 to 7,000 acres of farmland and a stated total cost of $10, according to the Star. The church's board had intended to sell 40 acres and a mule to former slaves and tenants for homesteads, the paper reports. Samuel P. Harbison, a key participant in the church's purchase from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, later lent his name to the forest. The South Carolina Forestry Commission purchased 2,200 acres of the property from the church in the 1950s at $10 per acre, per the Star's account, and part of that land was eventually developed into Broad River Correctional Institute. The forest is managed today by James Miller and Brad Phillips of the Forestry Commission, the paper notes, and encompasses 2,137 acres by the Star's count — though other sources list different figures, including 2,176 acres per The State and 2,177 acres per the South Carolina Encyclopedia, which notes that volunteer groups have long provided enthusiastic assistance in building and maintaining hiking and bicycle trails there.
Friends of Harbison State Forest holds open monthly meetings on the second Monday of each month and continues to advocate against commercial development and city encroachment, according to the Star. Richland County's Conservation Commission has repeatedly provided the group funding for trail repair, bridge repair and kiosks, officials told the paper in a separate report on the commission's preservation efforts. The nonprofit's current grant, called Enhanced Signage for Lost Creek Trails, grew out of an earlier opportunity: after the Forestry Commission cleared part of the property, Friends of Harbison Forest used that opportunity to refurbish the trail system, according to the Star's grant coverage.
