The initial settlement of present-day Edgefield County occurred in the quarter century between 1750 and 1775. Some settlers came up from the South Carolina Lowcountry but more poured down "the Great Wagon Road" from the colonies to the north. In this colonial period the economy was primarily a subsistence one, in which the settlers consumed what they raised. Initially there were no courts or law enforcement, but beginning in the mid-1760s, the law-abiding settlers began their struggle to bring law, order, and government to the "backcountry" of South Carolina.