Historic Soapstone Site Opens Its Story to Visitors with New Self-Guided Tour

PICKENS COUNTY, S.C. — A remarkable Upstate story spanning Cherokee history, slavery, emancipation and more than 160 years of African American community life is now easier for the public to experience.

Soapstone Baptist Church and the Historic Liberia Community in northern Pickens County is now available through a new web-based, self-guided tour that allows visitors to explore the historic site on their own schedule. The tour is available at soapstonepe.org/tour.

“This new tool allows people to come when it works for them, walk the historic grounds, and discover a story that deserves to be better known,” said Carlton Owen, Chairman of the Soapstone Preservation Endowment. “Few places in the Upstate exhibit so many layers of our shared history in one place.”

Long before the Liberia Community was established, Cherokee people came to the area to quarry soapstone, a soft rock used to make cooking implements and ceremonial objects.

Following emancipation, formerly enslaved African Americans built a thriving community here. For more than a century and a half, Liberia was home to generations of Black families who farmed the land, worshipped at Soapstone Baptist Church, educated their children and built new lives as free Americans.

Located just three miles from Scenic Highway 11, the historic site is now easier to find thanks to a new directional sign provided by Pickens County. The self-guided tour represents another step in introducing residents and visitors to one of the Upstate’s distinctive and often overlooked historic places.

Plans call for the self-guided experience to be supplemented by periodic guided tours and hosted lunches, giving visitors additional opportunities to hear the stories of Liberia from people with deep connections to the community.

The Soapstone Preservation Endowment was established in June 2022 by friends of the Liberia Community and Soapstone Baptist Church to protect and promote the community’s historic buildings, grounds and stories.

In just forty months, supporters raised a $1 million permanent endowment -- creating a perpetual source of funding to preserve this extraordinary place without the need for paid staff or annual fundraising.