Carolina Ghost Towns
Carolina Ghost Towns is an exploration of the lost towns and communities in South Carolina, North Carolina, and occasionally Georgia
Episodes
The ghost town of Maybinton is truly a ghost town, for it is the home of the spectral Hound of Goshen which haunts these parts. Maybinton was located in Newberry County near the Broad River. Named for William Maybin, it thrived during the 19th Century, but died out after the Civil War.
Links:
The town of Athens was a short-lived town on the north end of Travelers Rest, South Carolina. It had been part of Travelers Rest, but split off from the lower town due to civic disagreement. Later, it was reabsorbed into Travelers Rest. A segregated community known as Pine Ridge grew up in the old Athens area, but retained several of the Athens names.
Most of the information I have comes from a 2016 blog post I wr...
Cokesbury Masonic Female College
The communities of Tabernacle, Mount Ariel, and Cokesbury are located in northern Greenwood County, South Carolina. These communities represent the evolution of a Utopian Methodist settlement formed around an academic institution. Resources for this episode:
Mayucha was a boom town in Oconee County, South Carolina, at the turn of the 20th Century. Now located in the Sumter National Forest, the town was known for gold mining. There is much that is unknown about this town.
Resources:
Lost Cove Cabin - photo by Brenda Wiley
The community of Lost Cove was never really a town, yet it's on just about every list of North Carolina ghost towns. It was always been remote, with no roads into the community.
Resources:
Season 4 of Carolina Ghost Towns drops on Tuesday, September 1.
Happy Fourth of July!
I'm taking some time off from the podcast to travel and be with family. I'll be back with more episodes later in August. Until then, have a great summer!
In the 1730s, a group of Swiss and French Huguenots let by Jean Pierre Purry came to South Carolina and settled on the Savannah River. Their new town became known as Purrysburg.
These are some of the resources used in this episode:
- Blog Post - Grave Matters on the Savannah
- Blog Post - A Paddle and a Pow Wow on the Savannah River
- A History of Purrysburg on Carolana
- Wikipedia article
Skagit City
Since I'm in the Pacific Northwest, I thought it would be good to do another ghost town from this area. Today's ghost town is Skagit City in Washington. This is another town with connections to the Southeast.
Here are some of the resources I used in this episode...
- Skagit River Journal
- Tales of the Magic Skagit
- Ghost Camps and Boom Towns by JoAnn Roe
- Blog Post - Searching ...
This week I'm traveling and I've got a bad head cold, so I'm reposting an episode from Season 1. I hope to be back in a couple of weeks with new episodes.
The town of Totness was a resort for the wealthy in Calhoun County. It had no central business district or town layout, but it was chartered as a town in 1855. When Sherman's troops came through in 1864 the village was never rebuilt.
Most of the resources used in this episode are from newspapers.com and behind a paywall. Here are the only two that might be publicly available:
The town of Jalapa was named for Xalapa, Mexico after members of the Palmetto Regiment fought near there in the Battle of Cerro Gordo. Now just a crossroads in Newberry County, it was once an active community with stores, churches, and a school.
Most of the information I used in this episode can be found on my blog post, Seeking Jalapa.
Lando is a largely abandoned mill town in eastern Chester County. It was once the largest producer of blankets in the US. The only remnants left from the town are the old school and the old mill store, which is now the Lando-Manetta History Center. Please note - in this episode we describe a visit to the interior of the Lando School. The school is on private property and has been the victim of vandalism. It...
Instead of linking all of the resources mentioned in this episode, I decided to do a podcast with a transcript of the show and with the links mentioned, plus a couple of others I forgot to include. This can be found on the RandomConnections website at this link.
Childsbury was a settlement on the Cooper River, inland from Charleston. It was one of the oldest planned towns in South Carolina, and Strawberry Chapel is one of the oldest extant buildings in the state.
Here are some of the resources I used for this episode:
Located in the High Hills of the Santee, Stateburg missed out on being the state capital of South Carolina by one vote. It was the home of General Thomas Sumter.
Here are some of the resources:
The town of Proctor was a logging town located on the north shore of Lake Fontana. When the lake was flooded, access was cut off to the town site, and specifically to the 34+ cemeteries located on the northern shore of the lake. A road to the cemeteries was promised, but never completed. Now, a "Road to Nowhere" ends 10 miles short of its destination.
These are some of the resources used in this episode:
When the Fontana Dam was completed in 1944, the newly created lake inundated several communities in Western North Carolina, including the towns of Judson and Almond. This week we take a look at Judson, on the southern side of Lake Fontana.
Here are some of the resources used in this episode;
Fort Madison, Old Madison, and New Madison were located on the Tugaloo River in the western part of Oconee County. Here are some of the links I used in this episode:
This week we visit the ghost town of Fort Motte, in Calhoun County, South Carolina. The town takes its name from a British garrison, which was named after the plantation owner, Rebecca Brewton Motte.
Resources:
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