Caesars Head State Park

Caesars Head State Park is a park in northern Greenville County, South Carolina, that borders Transylvania County, North Carolina, and is reached via US 276. The eponymous rock formation, one of the highest points in Greenville County, is a granitic gneiss outcrop at 3,208ft above sea level on the Blue Ridge Escarpment of the Blue Ridge Mountains and rests roughly 2000ft above the Piedmont below. (The origin of the name “Caesars Head” is disputed, though the outcrop was most probably named for an early mountaineer’s dog.) Caesars Head State Park and Jones Gap State Park are jointly administered by the state Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism as part of the Mountain Bridge Wilderness.HistoryIn 1825 the state engineer and noted architect Robert Mills described Caesars Head as a "mass of granite, rising from the vale, through which a rapid river winds its turbulent way...the ledges of stone, rising almost perpendicular, and at length, hanging over at top, so that they seem to totter to their fall."After the completion of the Jones Gap Road in 1848, a former state senator, Benjamin Hagood, purchased about 2,400 acres around Caesars Head where he built a summer cottage, and later a hotel, “to take advantage of the area’s cool breezes, moderate temperatures, and breath-taking views.” The hotel closed in 1862, and Hagood died in 1865, leaving the property to his daughter Eliza and her husband, Dr. Francis Miles, the first physician in Pickens County. During the Civil War, the area was frequented by deserters from the Confederate Army, but by 1876 the Mileses were operating a health resort on the mountain.