Edisto Island Serpentarium

The story

Brothers Ted and Heyward Clamp spent over half a century catching wild reptiles across the Lowcountry before opening South Carolina's first true serpentarium on Edisto Island in July 1999. Instead of stuffing specimens into stackable glass tanks like a standard roadside zoo, they engineered open-air, low-walled habitats filled with live trees, ponds, and thick leaf litter. You aren't looking through smudge-covered aquariums; you're standing along elevated walkways and low curbs, staring directly down into sunken outdoor pits where cottonmouths, rattlesnakes, and copperheads swim, climb branches, and move naturally at eye level.

That commitment to open-air husbandry creates an unnerving closeness, and it required extreme measures when Hurricane Matthew barreled toward the coast in 2016. As storm surges threatened the island, the Clamp brothers stayed behind during the hurricane's approach to manually catch, box, and bag several hundred live venomous snakes by hand to safely transport the collection out of harm's way. The result is a venue built by people who genuinely care about dispelling reptile myths—even if looking a pit viper in the eye with nothing but a low barrier between you makes your stomach drop.