The Dark Corner

For more then 200 Years the Dark Corner of Upper Greenville County has remained South Carolina’s most elusive and notorious district.

It was known in the past as an area full of outlaws and moonshiners. An area said where strangers unknowingly might go in and not return and to have rivaled the old west for its gun-fights, knife-fights, and mayhem in general. Today however, it is known as the area containing the beautiful, and almost unheard of, rugged mountains of South Carolina, of which, the folks who live here are so proud of.

Fay and Bob continue to learn about the history of their new community when  they purchased the 92 minute DVD that folows this area from the Archaic Indians up through the ages to the Moonshining era.

Goats to the rescue

Here is the follow up to  my Kudzu post.  This information is from the Sunday Greenville SC newspaper.

Greenville County Recreation District will be employing 30 goats as temps.  They will be use to clear underbrush on about 15 acres to help preserve the historic Campbell’s Covered Bridge in the park.  The terraine is too rocky or steep for human or machine clearing.  In addition heavy equipment would send silt and mud into the Beaverdam Creek and damage or destroy part of the old homestead. Goats not only clear large areas of brush and weeds, including poison oak and poison ivy, they also fertilize and till. You need 10 goats per acre.   They will clear it in a month.

Yes, there is a company that does this.  It is called Wells Goat Farm.  You have to check out http://wellsfarmgoats.com/gallery, where these photos are from.  Pretty interesting ecological way to clear an area.  Here are before and after photos of what the goats did in one month.

Historic Travelers Rest 200 years old

I remember very clearly back about three years ago when Bob and I were  exploring this area for the first time.   It was afternoon and we had been driving all day and were coming down out of the mountains and saw a sign for Travelers Rest.   I assumed it was a state road side rest stop like we had often seen in our travels.  These rest stops are large and well marked.  I looked and looked and couldn’t find it and I said to Bob “I don’t know how we missed this rest stop.”  It wasn’t until much later that I realized Travelers Rest was a town and not a rest stop.  Little did I know that we had just driven by our future home town. 

Bob and I attended the Travelers Rest Fall Festival and bicentianl celebration on Saturday.  Travelers Rest stretches to the NC border. 

From the Travelers Rest Web Site

Where the travelers rested

In the early 1800’s, settlers in Conestoga wagons (large covered wagons pulled by four to six horses) were passing through what was to become Travelers Rest, South Carolina in increasing numbers and roads were becoming more common. “Drovers” herded horses, mules, cattle, sheep, and hogs from Kentucky and Tennessee to markets in South Carolina.¹ 

(Fay comment from information in the Greenville paper: Drovers came from NC, Tennessee and Kentucky and brought cattle, pigs, horses and wild turkeys.  Led by drovers down the mountain trails … they could travel, depending on the animal, anwhere from 5 (for turkeys) to 10 (for pigs) miles a day.  I have to honestly say I never thought about how fast a wild turkey walked!)All these travelers needed places to rest along their long journeys and stores and taverns sprouted up to meet their needs. One of these spots was north of the modern day Travelers Rest, on what is now highway 25, where a Mr. and Mrs. William Bishop operated an inn where the drovers could sleep indoors while their animals were kept in a nearby pen.  Stopovers such as this gave rise to the colorful, if not too imaginative, name of Travelers Rest.

 

If once is good, twice must be better

Travelers Rest has the notable distinction of achieving incorporation as a city twice in its history (1891 and 1959). Although records are a bit limited on the subject, residents of Travelers Rest did, in fact, apply to the state government in 1891 to be incorporated as a bona fide governmental entity.³ The following act from December 23, 1891 is on file in the Columbia statehouse, incorporating Travelers Rest for a period of thirty years:

Statutes of South Carolina Vol. XX, pages 1373-74

An Act to Incorporate the Town of Travelers Rest in Greenville County

Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of South Carolina, now met and sitting in General Assembly, and by authority of the same, That (sic) all citizens of the United States who now are, or who may hereafter be, inhabitants of the town of Traveler’s (sic) Rest, in Greenville County, shall be deemed, and are hereby declared to be, a body politic and corporate; and that said town shall be known by the name of Traveler’s (sic) Rest, and the limits shall extend one-half mile in every direction from a point midway between the two depots of the Carolina, Knoxville, and Western Railway company, so that the limits shall form a circle.⁴

In 1959, the 2500 residents of Travelers Rest held an election and sent a request to the Secretary of State, O. Frank Thornton, petitioning for a second incorporation. Mr. Lehman Moseley received the following letter:

“We do have information that Travelers Rest was incorporated by a special act December 23, 1891, for a period of 30 years. The time ran out and insofar as our records show, there is nothing to prevent the incorporation of a town using the name Travelers Rest.

Town Festivals

Last weekend we went to a the “Falling for Greenville” festival.  Beautiful day, quite a few people, bands and lots of food which I wrote about before.  Here are a couple photos.   One of the photos is the “waiter race”.  They have to open a wine bottle, fill two glasses of wine and  put on a tray, go to the next table and set the table correctly and pour water, keep carrying the tray with wine and go over steps and deliver a menu, get the check, figure the tip correctly and carry the two glasses of wine back with out dropping, breaking or spilling anything.  Having spent so many years in food service I could really appreciate the skill all that took.What a hoot.

Yesterday was the Travelers Rest Fall Festival and celebration of 200 years of Travelers Rest.  What  a trip back to simplier times, small town fun and yummy food.  I think the pictures say it all.   Don’t miss the elephant.  I especially liked the bowling alley for the kids.

 

 

There is a new historical society group starting to meet once a month and I think I will check that out.  Might be a good way to meet new people and learn about the history.

Courage at 58

I know there is true courage – the kind you have when faced with illness, job loss, financial loss and thank goodness I am not needing that kind of courage.

My definition of courage today:

Courage when you are 58 is what you need when you want  to meet your women neighbors and you invite a goup of women you have never met to your Mary Kay skin care party next week! Stay tuned.

SC News

This is a big college sports area with Furman and Clemson so close.  The big news Monday was that the Clemson football coach for 10 years resigned effective immediately.  Sounds like no big scandal but his team was losing and it was time to go.   Today the big news is that because of the revenue shortfall which is affecting all parts of the government here as well as MN and other states, these two colleges will see their state funds shrink 15%. 

BMW is a big employer here and they announced cutting of 733 temp. jobs.  These jobs also provided health benefits and are considered well paying at $12 and $13 an hour. 

Both McCain and Obama are speaking in SC today, Saturday.

The drought continues to worsen.  Now it has spread from NC, SC, Georgia back to Kentucky and Virginia and West Virginia.   Those last three states had problems last year.  I thought it was interesting that in Kentucky a year ago it had gotten so bad that they told people to conserve tap water and brought in tens of thousands of gallons of bottled water to distribute to people.   Fire also was  a significant problem in the mountains and in Virgina.

On a positive note there were several bits of good economic news with the economy strong enough to have new shopping centers, hospital complexes and other business development continue as well as endowments of millions of dollars to Furman and Clemson.  Greenville is working hard to move its economy from the textile manufacturing area to technology based business.  They see a shortage of trained people in the future and growing the enrollment in technical schools is very important.

On a personal note, Fay was most excited to read in the style section that the new spring hair styles for 2009 are buns high on the head and some even off to the side as well as sleek ponytails.   Once again she will have a hair style that is fashionable and will go well with her fairy T Shirts and jeans.

An education in pipelines and gas

The newspaper tells us that the gas crunch is getting better here in SC.  I have only complained about the cost of gas in the past, not the shortage of it.  Here is what happened.  NC, SC, Georgia and I’m sure other places rely on pipelines that come from the Gulf Coast.  When Hurricane Ike hit those pipelines they went down.  Atlanta was fed with two pipelines and Greenville with one.  What I thought was really interesting is that once they are shut down and then start up the gas travels at 5 mph and at that rate would take at least 10 days until it got close to us and then it has to be moved by truck to all the gas stations.

Anyone reading this know anything about the pipelines in MN?  We don’t drive much and had full tanks so we were not affected but it really made me think about something I have taken for granted.