Union County, SC Tour 2015 - West Springs

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In the first part of this series, I started out in Union, in the second part I visited Buffalo,  and now I'm on the way to West Springs.

Heading toward West Springs on the Buffalo-West Springs Highway, I found a few old country stores that were new to me. I took photos off all but one, only because I didn't see a safe place to park at the time.
Temple Hill area country store Scott's Grocery - 4 Putman area country store - 2
I also made a small detour from the highway to visit this old service station I found on Panoramio.
J. L. Smith Grocery and Auto Service - 2
Now in West Springs, the first point of interest I encountered was Whitehead's Store.
Whitehead's Store - 1
The GNIS database shows another school named West Springs School down Bogan Road, but all I saw in the area of the old school's location were ranch-style houses. Possibly it have been the one in this framed photo hanging at the Union County History Museum:
West Springs Graded School
Also in West Springs is the West Springs Community Center, once West Springs High School.
West Springs Community Center - 3
I found a photo of this school in the South Carolina Insurance Photo Archives:
To the right is a another building, now apparently used as a spook house:
West Springs Spook House
This is likely the Domestic Science building in this insurance photograph:
To the school's left is a log cabin I didn't think was that old at first because it was in such good shape.
West Springs Community Center cabin
But this school insurance photo proved me wrong, labeled West Springs Community House:
At the intersection of the highway and Old Hotel Road is West Springs Baptist Church.
West Springs Baptist Church
On the left side of Old Hotel Road is a cemetery and a marker for the original location of the church.
Original church site marker
At the end of the road is a spring, West Springs. At one time, like the more famous Chick Springs and Glenn Springs, the spring water was touted for its healing properties. Naturally I had to have a sample.
West Springs - 8 West Springs - 1
I moved aside the cover only to discover the water didn't look appealing.
West Springs - 6
My water sample came out brownish-yellow, and I certainly do not intend to verify its healing abilities.The water looks better in this photo than it does in reality.
West Springs - 5
West Springs Hotel, until a few decades ago, was situated a few hundred feet up from the road's end. Following the template of other hotels near "healing" springs in South Carolina, the hotel's management would tout the quality of the spring water. This ad from a 1922 Union Daily-Times is one example:
I visited every site I had loaded on to a navigation app on my tablet, and more. Now that college football is back in season, I listened to a few football games on the radio while heading home.

Below is my map of historical sites in South Carolina, zoomed in to the area between Buffalo and West Springs.

See full screen

The sites I visited are marked on this map and also the one I didn't. The map is exportable to GPX and other common formats for easy loading on to the GPS device of your choice.

The photos from this part of the trip are in the Flickr album Union County, SC Tour 2015 - West Springs.

The complete trip photos are in the album Union County, SC Tour 2015 on Flickr and in the album Union County, SC Tour 2015 on Google Photos.

With the cooler weather in place, I'd like to go on a waterfall adventure soon. We'll see.

Location: West Springs, SC 29374, USA

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