Some places don’t need an introduction so much as a closer look.
For generations, John de la Howe has been part of McCormick—a beautiful campus, a familiar name and a place that feels unlike anywhere else nearby.
Plant sales, farm events and community traditions like Halloween trunk-or-treat have given local families their own reasons to spend time there. The school has changed over the years, but its connection to McCormick has remained.
What happens there today may be even more interesting than many people realize.
A School Day With a Little More Room
Most high schools bring to mind lockers, classrooms and the occasional trip to the football field.
John de la Howe adds a few other possibilities: greenhouses, equipment shops, cattle, horses, beehives, forests and 1,310 acres with plenty of room for the school day to wander.
Officially, the South Carolina Governor’s School for Agriculture at John de la Howe is the nation’s only public residential high school devoted to agricultural education.
It would be easy to hear “agricultural school” and picture students spending the day learning to farm. Farming is certainly part of the story, but agriculture is a much bigger word here.
The school’s four pathways cover plant and animal systems, horticulture, agricultural mechanics and technology, and environmental and natural resources. Within them, students might work with livestock or bees, study food science and conservation, operate equipment or explore the technology changing modern agriculture.
Honors-level core classes remain part of the day. They just share the calendar with the possibility of a greenhouse, a wooded trail or an animal with absolutely no interest in the lesson plan.
Worth Traveling For
John de la Howe serves students in grades 10 through 12 from across South Carolina.
Because it is a residential school, students can attend even when home is several hours away. For part of the year, McCormick becomes their home base—a place to learn, live and build friendships with students who arrived from other parts of the state.
That gives this small corner of South Carolina a wider reach than most people realize. Families find their way to McCormick because their children found an opportunity here.
It is one of those details that makes a familiar place feel a little different once you know it.
Old Roots, Very Current Work
John de la Howe’s story began in 1797, making it South Carolina’s oldest educational institution below the college level.
Its purpose and structure have changed considerably over more than two centuries. In 2020, it began its newest chapter as the South Carolina Governor’s School for Agriculture.
Not many schools can fit “established in 1797” and “agricultural technology” comfortably into the same story, but this one does.
The history is worth knowing, although it isn’t the whole story. What students are doing there now—and where those experiences may take them next—is every bit as interesting.
The campus continues to welcome the wider community through camps, special events and agricultural programs. Some people know John de la Howe through a student or employee. Others remember an event, a childhood visit or simply how beautiful the campus is.
Those connections are part of its story too.
Perhaps that is what makes John de la Howe so interesting: it can feel familiar and surprising at the same time. It is rooted in McCormick but connected to students and families across the state—a place where a history dating to 1797 sits comfortably beside modern agriculture, and a school day occasionally gets a little dirt on its boots.