Mark's Photo Travels

Showers and thunderstorms were likely, the sky was cloudy, a few sprinkles were falling, but I went anyway. As I do every year, I attended the Uniquely Union festival now held  in downtown Union, SC. I left later than normal due to the questionable weather, so I didn't arrive until just before my favorite part of the festival was about to start: the Taster's Choice BBQ event. This year for your $5 you received a card with ten punches. Present the card to the BBQ competitor, your card is punched and you receive a sample. After ten punches, choose your winner by handing in the card to the competitor of your choice. The winner of the Taster's Choice competition this year was the Brother-in-law BBQ team: As usual, I went by the Union County History Museum to catch up with their affable director Ola Jean Kelly to see what's new. After that, I walked around taking photos of the festival... ... and the historical sites in town. I tried to ...

Back in April, as previously written about , I went along with Tom Taylor down to Shoals Junction and other nearby communities, including Cokesbury and Hodges. In researching my April blog post, I discovered  historic  Old Cokesbury College would be open to the public on June 23rd and 24th as part of the Festival of Flowers, and I immediately made the decision to tolerate the heat and go back to tour the historic college. It would also give me an opportunity to look for the Southern Railway depot in Hodges I didn't know about during my last visit. Old Cokesbury College Old Cokesbury College, as I'll call it for simplicity's sake, is a historic building located in the community of Cokesbury, Greenwood County, South Carolina . From its construction in 1854 until 1874, the building was home to the Masonic Female College of South Carolina, sponsored by the Bascombe Lodge No. 90 of Free Mason. In 1874, long term financial difficulties forc...

View Larger Map A few times last year, I traveled around Taylors, SC photographing locations of the community's three historical depots. The first depot was built in the early 1870s for the Atlanta and Richmond Railway, later Southern Railway, on land held by Alfred Taylor. The community that developed around this depot quickly became known as Taylor's Station, eventually shortened to just Taylors. The depot was located between present day Freeman Drive and one of several parking lots for Taylors First Baptist Church. View Larger Map The South Carolina Library's Railroad Photograph Collection includes a May 1975 photo of the depot. 1975 photo from South Carolina Library's Railroad Photograph Collection Today, the depot is no longer there. The only hint left a structure once stood here are the ruins of a driveway off of Taylors Road. Current CSX railroad right-of-way The depot was moved, possibly in the early to mid 2000s, and is now a...