Mark's Photo Travels

For the past several weeks, the owners of  Taylors Mill  have been promoting their big celebration, Taylors Mill - 50 years later , through social media and television. I had already scheduled the last of my vacation days several months ago for this week, so when information about the event came out I was to happy to learn I was already available. The Taylors Mill - 50 years later event page on Facebook explains the purpose the celebration In 1965, the Southern Bleachery closed the doors on its makers. In 2015, we celebrate a new generation of makers, artisans and craftsmen in Taylors. On April 22, 1965, the Spartanburg Herald-Journal reported the news that Southern Bleachery and Printworks, in business since 1924, will wind down operations over the next few months leaving about 1000 people out of work. J. P. Stevens bought the mill two months later, and would own the mill until 1998, but the number of jobs didn't replace all the ones lost. Taylors Mill is no...

This time of year the heat and humidity usually keep me inside where the air is nicely air conditioned, but with the cool and cloudy weather this morning I was ready for a quick and easy adventure. I first stopped at the site of the Duncan Chapel Methodist Cemetery, better known these days as the Children's Graveyard, located off Old Buncombe Road . When I last visited in 2013 , the land was being cleared for development. Today a Walmart Marketplace, a gas station, and a parking lot border the cemetery. The cemetery now is enclosed in a nice black fence. The whole area has been transformed since my first visit to the cemeter y in 2011. This is what the entrance looked like back then: The trees and overgrowth seen in the above photo and in my Flickr album Children's Graveyard - 2011  are gone. The ruins of Thackston Dairy (off the left side of the road) are also gone. Half a mile north of the Children's Graveyard, also off Old Buncombe Road , is thi...