Union County, SC Tour 2015 - Union

It's the first Saturday after Labor Day and it's time again for my yearly adventure to rural Union County and the Uniquely Union Festival in downtown Union, South Carolina. With the move from the Union County Fairgrounds to downtown Union a few years ago the festival has evolved away from a BBQ centered festival to one with more variety of events designed to draw more people. The main draw for me remains the Taster's Choice event, but first I visited some familiar points of interest.

The exact placement of the festival areas changes every year, and the parking area I used last year was now vendor parking. I ended up parking behind the courthouse, giving me an easy opportunity to take a quick photo of Corinth Baptist Church.

Corinth Baptist Church, built in 1894, is the first church in Union to house an African-American congregation. In recognition of its importance to Union's history, the church has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places since 1984.

The Union County History Museum was next on my list, and every year the museum has something new to see.

This year's new displays are these face jugs.

The museum director, the friendly and knowledgeable Ola Jean Kelley, was on-hand walking around chatting with the museum visitors. After chatting with her a few minutes, and after showing me some information about the later part of my trip, I thanked her for her time and continued my tour around town.

If you've read my previous Uniquely Union posts, the places I visited will look familiar.

The G.E. Lipscomb Building...

once the home of the local Coca-Cola Bottling Company.

The former Southern Railway depot.

Two former schools now used by USC Union.

The way to the Taster's Choice event took me through the Kidz Zone, where the rides looked rather entertaining.

For $5, you get to sample up to 1 cup of BBQ from 10 vendors. This year, there were only 14 vendors so we were allowed to sample them all.

Every year, the voting process changes slightly. This year, each vendor had a jar where you deposited your ticket to vote for that vendor's BBQ.

All the BBQ was very good, making the decision difficult. I voted for Divine Smoke BBQ because it's sauce was a bit different from the others, yet still good. I have no idea who won the Tasters's Choice yet, but I will update this text when and if I do.

I also took the time before leaving to check out the classic cars on display.

With that, it was time to travel a few miles west down the Buffalo-West Springs Highway to the community of Buffalo and visit the ruins of the mill. That will be the topic of the next post, the second part of three in this series.

Photos from this part of the trip are in the album Union County, SC Tour 2015 - Union at Flickr. The whole trip is in the album Union County, SC Tour 2015 at Flickr or Union County, SC Tour 2015 at Google Photos.