Charleston Stays Strong

Even In Face Of Unimaginable Loss, South Carolina City Moves Forward

(CBS)  Throughout its history, Charleston, S.C. has known more than its share of pain. From the days of the Civil War to more recently — the death of nine firefighters who were killed battling a stubborn warehouse fire — the city has always stayed strong.

"It's the human spirit … [and] the drive to not to fail to survive; that's what the citizens have within them," said Joe Riley, who has been the mayor of Charleston for 31 years.

In 1989, Hurricane Hugo almost wiped Charleston off the map. North of Charleston, Hugo leveled the Francis Marion forest; 18 years after the fact, the forest is just a mass of twisted pines.

"If I lose everything again, I'll try to rebuild. This is home," said Ronnie Morris, whose family has lived at the edge of the forest for more than 100 years.

That's the Charleston spirit, says Riley. "The citizens of this great city over time have met a city destroyed by war, by fire and by earthquake and they had the courage to come back — and we will, too."

Charleston has often been depicted in movies and television as being emblematic of the Old South mentality. Boone Hall, a local plantation, was used in the classic mini-series "North and South."

It's still a working farm, providing fresh, local produce.

Not far away, the Charleston Tea Plantation is the only place in North America that you can find tea leaves growing and then turned into tea.

Taylor Drayton Nelson oversees the Northern Hemisphere's oldest estate gardens, which were begun by his family in the 1680s. But their beauty traces back to an ugly past. Like Boone Hall, the Magnolia Plantation was home to African slaves.

"Not a lot of people are certainly willing to discuss the topic of slavery and some find it to be something uncomfortable to really delve deeper into," he told The Early Show.

Taylor and his family are behind a move to restore the slave cabins to their original condition and restore ties to the families of the people who lived in them.

Last year Taylor's family reunited with African-American descendants of the people who helped develop Magnolia. "I was amazed at how open and how enthusiastic and how really, really hopeful and just courageous their approach to the project and to sharing their history was," Taylor said.

Though the sadness over the lost firefighters will linger for many years, the city will continue to grow in new ways.

"The scale and the beauty of the place is nourishing. That's why you want to come back," explained Riley.