A four-piece string band played mountain music that drifted across the southern tip of Lake Jocassee, through tall pines standing on the shore, and landed on the mile-long Oconee Bell Trail at Devils Fork State Park, in the South Carolina foothills.
Trees felled by the fury of Hurricane Helene last September rested beside the wooded path, but the hundreds of adventurers at Devils Fork on this sunny Saturday a half-year after the storm did not come here to lament the devastation. They arrived joyfully for a glimpse of the rare wildflower that lends this trail its name.
On this third day of Spring 2025, the famed “Oconee Bell” was in bloom, and nature-lovers from across the South gathered to celebrate its beauty at the 12th annual Bellfest.
Oconee Bells, with their bright white-and-yellow blossoms perched on red stems and pink-and-green-tinged leaves, appear in this valley for only a few weeks each year from mid-March to early April. Devils Fork is one of only a small handful of places where the Shortia galacifolia are known to naturally flourish.
Welcoming More To The Mountains
A partnership between the state park and Friends of Jocassee, a local conservation organization, Bellfest is a day-long feast of live music, barbecue, kayaking, and of course, hiking the flower-laden trail.
“It’s a way to celebrate the Oconee Bell, a unique resource, and it’s a way to kick off our busy season,” park manager Rowdy Harris said. “Devils Fork is a very busy park from Memorial Day through Labor Day. These shoulder seasons are something we really like to highlight because it’s a way to visit the park when it’s not so crazy busy. Don’t get me wrong: Bellfest is a very busy event, but this is one of those days we’ve never had to turn anybody away.”
During summer months, the crystal-clear waters of Lake Jocassee are the star attraction at Devils Fork, which offers the only public access to this pristine 7,500-acre reservoir created by Duke Energy in 1973 its for hydroelectric and nuclear power projects. The land surrounding the lake is largely undeveloped except for a few dozen million-dollar homes cloistered in gated communities.
An estimated 350,000 people each year navigate the narrow, winding roads through the Jocassee Gorges to fill summertime weekends and holidays at Devils Fork to capacity. Often, the park will run out of vehicle spaces and have to limit visitor access.
During Bellfest, according to Ranger Rowdy, “We’re able to get people into the park, and that’s what we want to be able to facilitate – being able to give people more access to the park at times when we’re not as busy.”
A Party For Nature
Organizers postponed the 2025 edition of Bellfest from its original date a week earlier when severe weather raked across the Upstate. This weekend, as blue skies and brilliant sunshine prevailed over Lake Jocassee, a rapidly-expanding wildfire about 20 miles east of Devils Fork raged atop Table Rock Mountain, the signature feature of another popular Upstate park.
Campers who settled into their Devils Fork sites Friday afternoon for a long weekend of Bellfestivities were told they would need to celebrate this year without the warmth and cozy light of a traditional campfire. On the eve of the festival, with Table Rock ablaze not so far away because of careless teenage hikers, South Carolina’s governor issued a statewide outdoor burn ban. Dry conditions, low humidity and fierce early-spring winds created an elevated risk for another natural disaster.
Nonetheless, the mood under the Devils Fork lakeside picnic pavilion was festive as members of Conservation Theory, a quartet led by owners of the nearby Jocassee Valley Brewing Company, lifted festival-goers’ spirits with their lively Appalachian folk songs. Rented kayaks, canoes and pontoons from the on-site Eclectic Sun Paddlesports sliced across Jocassee’s wind-whipped waters against the backdrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Patrons strolled among a pop-up tent village where the South Carolina Native Plant Society, the Foothills Trail Conservancy, the Friends of Gorges State Park and other nature-friendly organizations shared their enthusiasm for the outdoors. Sweethearts of all ages walked hand-in-hand along the shore.
Making New Friends
Celebrating the uniqueness of the Oconee Bell each year at Bellfest is a signature effort for the nonprofit Friends of Jocassee. “It only grows at certain elevations, and it only grows near water. We want to preserve and protect that flower just like we want to preserve and protect the Gorges area,” said Dan Polstra, the organization’s vice-president.
Friends of Jocassee holds “Conservation of the Jocassee Gorges for All” as its central mission. Founded in 2011, the organization exists to “dedicate our work to preserve, protect and promote the history, culture, and exquisite natural resources of Lake Jocassee, and the Jocassee Gorges, encompassing the whole Blue Ridge Escarpment,” according to its website.
A silent auction and a raffle for a vacation at one of Devils Fork’s 20 lakeside villas were offered to Bellfest attendees. Among the projects recently funded by the Friends of Jocassee last year were updated interpretative signs along the Oconee Bell Trail, maintenance of wood duck boxes around the lake, and collecting more than 50 bags of trash from along four miles of highway.
“If you’ve ever been here, you’ll realize how beautiful and special this place is,” Mr. Polstra said. “I want my kids and my grandkids to come and be able to enjoy it like I have. I want to do my part to make sure that happens.”
‘The Secretive Plant’
A history of the Oconee Bell published by the South Carolina Native Plant Society calls it a “secretive plant” and recounts the centuries-long fascination with the rarity and limited bloom life of the Shortia galacifolia.
First discovered in 1788 by French botanist Andre Michaux during his exploration of the Carolina backcountry, the plant later became a lifelong obsession for famed American botanist Asa Gray. An associate of Charles Darwin who is best known for his seminal work Gray’s Manual of Botany, Dr. Gray had seen a specimen in Michaux’s collection during a visit to Paris in 1839.
Dr. Gray identified the dry, shriveled plant as a unique find and hoped to collect a living specimen in the wild during several field expeditions from Harvard University to the North Carolina mountains. For nearly four decades, the tiny white plant eluded the determined botanist.
In 1877, according to the Harvard University Herbaria, a 17-year-old fisherman named George Hyams stumbled upon a colony of the plants growing along the banks of the Catawba River near Marion, North Carolina, east of present-day Asheville. The boy’s herbalist father sent specimens to a scientist friend in Rhode Island, who passed them along to Dr. Gray. Two years later, Dr. Gray and two associates traveled to Marion and found fewer than 100 live plants along the Catawba.
One of the botanists who accompanied Dr. Gray on that expedition was Dr. Charles Sargent. In 1886, he returned to the region and ventured farther south into what is now the Jocassee Gorges, guided by references in Michaux’s journals. Here, Dr. Sargent “rediscovered” acres of the Oconee Bell and the apparent location of Michaux’s discovery almost a century earlier.
The Stories They Can Tell
Some eight decades later, Duke Energy flooded the natural habitat for the Oconee Bells to create Lake Jocassee. At the time, a few hearty souls made the effort to transplant some of the flowers in the nearby hills. In 1990, around 620 acres in those hills became Devils Fork State Park.
Such love of all things native was evident at the South Carolina Native Plant Society booth during this year’s Bellfest, where one of organization’s founding fathers Rick Huffman and other plant enthusiasts answered questions and educated the curious about the Oconee Bell. They also offered specimens of other native South Carolina wildflowers for visitors to transplant to their own backyards.
“The Oconee Bell is iconic for the Gorges because it’s so rare and only found here, but it also tells us a lot about the history and the geology of the Gorges,” Mr. Huffman said. “It tells us about cold mountain streams and pristine waters, also about the biodiversity here… I love all our native plants, and they all have something unique to offer and a unique story.”
The Friends of Jocassee and Devils Fork State Park are already looking ahead to next year’s Bellfest in mid-March. Meanwhile, those who have not yet discovered the natural wonder of this northern South Carolina jewel may enjoy other upcoming Friends’ events at Devils Fork: a Fishing With Friends Trout Tournament on Saturday, April 26 and the Lake Jocassee Paddle Splash for kayakers and canoeists on Saturday, October 4.
The iconic Oconee Bells may be long gone for the year by then, but those who venture into the Jocassee Gorges between now and March are sure to discover a fresh growth of memories here along with new friends who share a love for nature.
Gallery
Photos by Tony Baughman & Candace J. Carter
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