Buying Land in Chester County, South Carolina

Countywide zoning with an 8-acre Agricultural district and conservation subdivisions

Chester County has adopted a countywide zoning ordinance whose provisions explicitly apply to all land and improvements within the unincorporated areas of the county -- a real, applicable framework rather than a town-only rule, and one the county appears to actively maintain: the county's own posted master zoning-ordinance document carries a February 23, 2026 date in its filename, suggesting a genuinely recent revision rather than a stale, years-old text. Chester County's Agricultural (AG) district requires a minimum area of 8 acres to establish a new stand-alone AG zoning classification, and permits agricultural uses, ranching, and recreation and hunting, along with limited government, service, and business uses.

The ordinance also includes a conservation-subdivision option, which lets a landowner permanently protect agriculturally, environmentally, or historically significant portions of a larger tract -- through a recorded conservation mechanism -- while subdividing the remaining, non-protected land into standard buildable lots. That's a genuinely useful tool if you're looking at a larger Chester County tract with both farmland or woodland worth preserving and a portion suited to development, and it's worth asking the county's Zoning Administrator directly about the process and any density bonus or flexibility it offers compared with a standard subdivision.

Growth pressure from Charlotte's southwestern edge

Chester County sits within the Charlotte, North Carolina metropolitan statistical area, and the broader Charlotte-region growth story has real implications here. As reporting from Charlotte's NPR affiliate has documented, several of Charlotte's closer-in suburbs have begun slowing new residential approvals -- "tapping the brakes on growth" -- which tends to push buyers seeking a large, new single-family home with a yard at an affordable price further out along the metro's edges, including into South Carolina counties like Chester that sit within commuting range but have historically had lower land costs and a more rural character.

For a land buyer, that means Chester County's northern and eastern portions, closer to the Charlotte area, likely face a genuinely different growth trajectory and land-value pressure than the county's more purely agricultural southern and western reaches. Neither is inherently better for a given buyer's goals, but they warrant different diligence: growth-adjacent land is worth checking against the county's comprehensive plan and any pending rezoning activity, while more rural land further from the metro edge is a better fit for straightforward agricultural or recreational-land evaluation under the AG district described above.

Great Falls: a mill town's second act, and the rest of the checklist

Chester County's most distinctive local land-use story sits in the town of Great Falls, along the Catawba River. Starting in 1907, Southern Power built the first hydroelectric powerhouse and dam at Great Falls, and the associated Republic Textile Mills Company opened its first mill by 1910, followed by a second mill and mill village by 1917 and a third by 1923 -- growth substantial enough that the company also built out the town's downtown commercial district to serve mill-worker families. That mill economy sustained Great Falls for most of the twentieth century before the mills began closing and relocating operations abroad starting in the 1980s, leading to a genuine, documented economic decline in the town.

More recently, Great Falls and the surrounding area have pivoted toward outdoor recreation as a second act: the Catawba River's whitewater rapids near Great Falls now draw kayakers and rafters, and a new South Carolina state park is under development on several islands in the Cedar Creek Reservoir, planned to include hiking trails, primitive camping, a yurt village, and interpretive exhibits. For a buyer looking at land near Great Falls specifically, that trajectory is worth factoring in as a potential tailwind for recreation-oriented land use, alongside the standard due diligence: septic (onsite wastewater) permitting in Chester County follows the statewide model, handled directly by SCDES rather than a county health department, through SCDES's regional office covering Chester, Lancaster, Kershaw, and York counties. Chester County sits outside South Carolina's eight-county coastal zone, so the Coastal Zone Management Act's critical-area permitting requirement doesn't apply here.

Chester County also has a real, dated utility-scale solar project in the pipeline: in May 2025, County Council approved a solar energy project for Chester PV 1 LLC involving a $39.14 million investment over five years, an expected 39.6 megawatts of generation, and a negotiated fee-in-lieu-of-tax repayment period extending 40 years. Chester County's own solar-specific standards are comparatively general -- ground-mounted solar must meet the base zoning district's minimum setback (not a solar-specific distance) and a 25-foot height cap, and solar farms are permitted as a conditional use only in the county's ID-1 and ID-2 industrial districts -- and as of a February 2026 council workshop, the county was actively considering updates to its setback and landscaped-buffer requirements, so confirm the current rule rather than relying on this snapshot.