Almost all of the images in this collection document a particular South Carolina place at a specific time in its history. This section, organized alphabetically is not intended, therefore, as a comprehensive list of every South Carolina community. It is actually a fairly impressionistic look at the county seats and rural villages, as well as the cities, in which South Carolinians live and work. For several towns and cities (Beaufort, Camden, Charleston, Columbia, Darlington, Georgetown, Greenville, Spartanburg, and Sumter), an effort has been made to select several images that show how that place has changed over time. Other places were chosen for special features that have made that town unique; still others have been chosen because they illustrate the features that many towns in the state have shared.
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The portrait artist William H. Scarborough (1812-1871), his wife Miranda, and their infant son spent the summer of 1840 in Greenville, when he made this painting of the falls on the Reedy River...
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This view of the Grand Strand's Crescent Beach in 1966 illustrates vividly the extensive development in vacation property that brings thousands of visitors to South Carolina's Horry County beaches...
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An aerial photo of the site of the new Gregg Finishing Plant shows the original Graniteville Mills in the right foreground (see William Gregg and The Graniteville Mill). Newtown, a newer section of...
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Hampton County was carved out of Beaufort County in 1878, creating a separate white political enclave, populated in part by those who had fled their coastal homes when the Beaufort area was occupied...
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The Kershaw County Courthouse was designed by famed South Carolina architect Robert Mills and built in 1826. The original courthouse had Ionic columns; local citizens, who wanted a more "modern"...
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Laurens, carved out of the Ninety Six District in 1785 and named after Henry Laurens (see Henry Laurens), was, like much of the backcountry, settled by Scotch-Irish in the pre-Revolutionary period...
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The Main Street of Lexington, sometime before a devastating fire in 1916 burned many of the business district buildings seen here. The county seat of Lexington County, the area was first settled by...
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The improvement of state highways in the 1920s brought increased tourist business to the South Carolina coastal resorts. The Ocean Forest Hotel at Myrtle Beach was built by a Greenville businessman in...
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The Plaza in Abbeville, in a postcard view from around 1900. The county seat of Abbeville County (one of the counties or districts created by the state in 1785), the town was named after Abbeville...
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The second county courthouse for Union County, built in 1827, was photographed in 1904 shortly before it was torn down in 1908 to make way for a new courthouse. Formed from the old Ninety Six District...
