Mark's Photo Travels

In the first part of this series, I started out in Unio n, 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. I also made a small detour from the highway to visit this old service station I found on Panoramio . Now in West Springs, the first point of interest I encountered was Whitehead's Store. 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: Also in West Springs is the West Springs Community Center, once West Springs High School. I found a photo of this school in the South Carolina Insurance Photo Ar...

In Tigerville Trek , Tom Taylor and I hit many of my most wanted targets on the list that day, but not all. I took those most wanted targets, added a few more I found in various sources, and took a brief cruise around Taylors and Greer yesterday to visit them all. First stop today was Foothills Vocational Center, located off of Saint Mark Road in Taylors. From 1954-1970, this was Lincoln High School , a segregated high school for African-Americans. The school was closed because of integration in 1970, and in 1972 the site became Foothills Vocational Center. The name would later change to Foothills Career Center, then Foothills Career and Technology Career Center as times and needs changed. The site closed in 2001 and the career center relocated to the site of the old Greer High School. This history summarized from Jean Martin Flynn's book  An Account of Taylors, 1817-1994  (just re-read) and Executive Summary J. Harvey Bonds Career Center (PDF format). The roadside ne...

Go forward a few days to last Wednesday, and it's already time for another photo outing. his time the humidity is lower, the temperature is cooler, but the sky is still mostly cloudy. I made a map listing of old, interesting churches, country stores, and former schools to visit along and near SC 414 in northern Greenville County. The main objective of this trip, however, was to visit the T. P. Wood store in Tigerville to see how the renovations to the store, announced in 2013, were progressing. Fellow explorer Tom was also ready for a trek, so a few days ago we visited some of the places on my list. Cool Springs Primitive Baptist Church Cool Springs Primitive Baptist Church is located off of Cool Springs Church Road between U.S. 25 and S.C. 414. This church piqued my interest, first for being historic (well of course) and second, the word "primitive". Just what is a Primitive Baptist anyway? From a FAQ  on the subject: Primitive Baptist ancestors have been calle...