A production of South Carolina ETV In association with the South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism.

♪ (male singer) ♪ Oh, I have found the sweetest place ♪ ♪ where people smile and know my name.

♪ ♪ Oh, I have found the sweetest land ♪ ♪ as warm as sun and cool as rain.

♪ ♪ A place so faaarrr from all we had, ♪ ♪ a place so far from all we've known, ♪ ♪ a quiet place that we can love ♪ ♪ and call our home.

♪ ♪ [water bubbling] (Joanna Angle) In 1791, South Carolina Governor Pinckney decided to honor George Washington by setting aside most of the state's northwest section as Washington District.

Later this became the Pendleton District, which was subsequently split, forming Pickens District in 1828.

Special commissioners appointed to choose a site for the new Pickens District headquarters discovered a location they judged ideal.

In fact, they reported it more favorably situated than ancient Rome, for, quote, "While Rome was built on seven hills "with the Tiber flowing by, Pickens was all hills with the Keowee flowing by."

During Reconstruction, delegates to South Carolina's 1868 constitutional convention passed an ordinance further dividing Pickens District into two counties, Oconee and Pickens.

Welcome to Pickens and to "Palmetto Places," a series that explores and celebrates South Carolina's small towns and countryside.

I'm Joanna Angle.

Immediately, officials began physically moving the Pickens District courthouse, the district jail, and other structures from old Pickens to the new Pickens County seat, 14 miles to the east.

The town was literally moved brick and board.

All that remains of old Pickens is this brick Presbyterian church, now truly the little, old church in the wildwood.

The district, the county, and town were named in honor of Revolutionary War general Andrew Pickens.

Of French Huguenot descent, Pickens pledged himself to the colony's cause and, with Thomas Sumter and Francis Marion, became one of the three great partisan leaders.

[water roaring] Andrew Pickens went to Congress in 1793.

According to "The W.P.A.

Guide to the Palmetto State," he rode to Washington, quote, "on a spirited white horse.

"The general himself was magnificently turned out, "and an African attendant, in splendid livery, followed him."

[water roaring] Objects that belonged to General Pickens and other treasures are found in the permanent collection of the Pickens County Museum.

This Gothic-style building, with its crenellated turret, was built in 1903 as the county jail.

The jail also provided living quarters for the sheriff and his family.

Sadly, just after the first sheriff moved in, his wife and daughter-in-law contracted typhoid fever, spread by a faulty sewage line seeping into the well.

The widower sheriff was left to rear 13 children.

Since 1976, the jail turned museum has attracted visitors who really want to be here.

C. Allen Coleman is the director.

(C. Allen Coleman) Pickens County and the town is named after General Andrew Pickens.

Brigadier General Pickens was instrumental, of course, in the turning of the Revolutionary War in the South, instrumental at the Battle of Cowpens from guerrilla tactics he learned from the Cherokee.

We're very proud to have him as a namesake.

We're proud to have some wonderful artifacts.

One of the very nice pieces we have here is the dueling pistol set.

He did capture this from a British officer during the siege on Augusta.

This is a very special collection, as it's completely intact.

We have the original encasement box.

We have the cleaning rags, the wrenches, bullet molds, the bullets themselves.

Everything is completely intact here.

So we're very glad to have that.

General Pickens was a good, devout Presbyterian and was instrumental in building the Old Stone Church over in what is now Clemson.

But even being a devout Presbyterian, he still enjoyed his libations.

So he had this wonderful Dominican mahogany decanter set that he would literaly take with him when he was on the trail, so if he wanted to stop and take a little brandy break, he could do so.

We have a few artifacts here and there that are taken from the old Hopewell Plantation home that we brought in here, his silver-tipped walking cane sword, the pegs, et cetera.

Of course, after the Revolutionary War, General Pickens was made a liaison between the state of South Carolina and Native Americans, primarily the Cherokee in his region.

The Cherokee, of course, are the people that were here before anyone else.

Some of our artifacts date back about 10,000 years, so we know the indigenous people were here quite a long time ago.

But before European settlers or anyone came here, this was all Cherokee territory.

All along the Keowee River where Lake Keowee is now, in that area, the Eastatoe Valley, and such, was essentially the capital of the lower nation of the Cherokee people.

We're very proud of this collection of artifacts we have here.

Of course, we're very proud of our soapstone carved bowls.

Before learning how to use clay and such, everything had to be carved from stone.

These wonderful bowls show that method-- from eating, for grinding, for whatever-- to prepare their foods.

We come across here, and we can now see some of the pottery and pottery sherds from the Mississippian Period around 1,000 A.D.

These are beautiful reproductions of intact pots that were made about 100 years ago in the original methods.

We also have these chungka stones, or "chunky stones" as they're called.

Chungka was a sport played by a lot of Native American tribes.

It was basically similiar to an eye-hand coordination thing where you would roll the stone down the long alleyway, take a spear and throw it, and hope that your spear would land where the stone would.

It was a very popular sport with the braves and a great gaming sport for the spectators.

The log cabin display is our version of how we thought a family may live here 150 years ago, when European settlers started coming to the Upstate.

Of course, everything you used, you had to make yourself.

We like to say if you wanted to eat it or wear it, you had to grow it or shoot it.

And that couldn't be truer.

There were no stores.

We have the bearskin rug, which of course, the animal skins played such an important role in insulating and keeping the cabin warm, 'cause the floors, the log floors and walls, so drafty.

The spinning wheel was from-- you'd raise your sheep, shear them, card it, spin it, weave it, everything.

You had to make your own.

Uh, the entertainment even... you had to create your own.

It was popular in some of the Upstate cultures throughout the Appalachian regions for families to make their own music.

So, after dinner, it was not at all unusual for you to grab the zither, or 'zidder' as they called it and sit around and have sing-alongs, which we still try to encourage children to do today with their parents.

This is our Congressional Medal of Honor display.

It's a display we're extremely proud of here in Pickens County.

These four young men, over the course of the 20th century, that gave the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

Two lost their lives in World War II, one in Korean conflict, and one in Vietnam.

It's a dubious honor, but we are honored to know that Pickens County, per capita, has more Congressional Honor recipients than any other county in the United States.

These four gentlemen are all from basically the Six Mile area, Liberty and Six Mile, which has a lineage going back to the Scottish settlers and of course, some people say that is because the Scottish are so brave they will not stop fighting.

The Pickens County Museum, like many museums of its nature, is important to the community.

We are here for community education, for community service.

We want everyone to know where we come from, and where we're going.

Of course, heritage is important, because from the past, we learn how to better our future, and what we have done here, the displays and things we're offering the community will help bring everyone into an involvement so that once again we can maintain as a community.

[water roaring] (Angle) The Pickens County Museum operates Hagood Mill, which was built around 1825 and operated as a gristmill until 1961.

This was a busy center of commerce, producing 2500 bushels of meal and 200 bushels of flour in 1870 and 120,000 bushels of cornmeal and 20,000 pounds of feed in 1880... record productions rates for a South Carolina mill.

Following a restoration in 1994, Hagood Mill is one of few in South Carolina which exhibits original components.

Alan Warner explains how the machinery works.

[water roaring] [machinery rattling] (Alan Warner) Once every two weeks or so, the community people would have to bring corn by the mill.

Just like you go by the grocery store, they would come by the mill to have their corn ground.

They would bring from 50 to 400 pounds of corn.

Most of the time, they would have it separated... around 50 pounds for their family to eat and then the rest for their animals.

They would bring it in the door in sacks.

The corn would be on the ear.

They would probably already have it nubbed, which means breaking bad kernels off both ends.

They wanted the corn real good and clean.

They would bring it here to the corn sheller.

What this does is take kernels of corn off the cob.

The way it works is, the person would put their ears of corn into the corn sheller.

The corncob would go down by a wheel with spikes on it.

The spikes would rub corn kernels off the cob.

The cob would come out here.

It'd be shaken across atop of a screen, out the wall, into a shed.

The people would come by later and pick up these cobs to use as heat or for starting fires.

The kernels of the corn would fall down through this screen, go down into this chute, and go down into a small hopper below here.

The hopper is connected to this conveyor.

The conveyor would lift the corn upstairs.

Upstairs, it would be dribbled down through a blower.

Sometimes the blower was on top of the hoop, but here it would dribble down through a blower, and it would blow dirt, dust, and silks, and any other kind of trash out of the corn to get it clean before it was ground.

[machinery rattling] [water roaring] What I'm doing now is regulating the water onto the wheel to get the speed of the wheel up, get us some more power so it'll turn these stones.

And you can see the... the process.

[machinery noises intensify] The corn is usually stored in a hopper upstairs.

From there, it comes down into what is called a hoop.

The corn stays there, and it's regulated down into a small shoe that's just below the hopper.

The way it's regulated is that it bounces on a shaft and that's called a damsel.

The old term is that the shoe is dancing on a damsel.

The corn goes down into the center of the stone.

It's rolled and cracked into smaller and smaller pieces in the inner 2/3 of the stone, and then on the outside third of the stone, it's actually sheared into chop, or what most people call "cornmeal."

From that point, it's pulled by the stone around the hoop and then down into the sifter.

[machinery rattling loudly] As the cornmeal comes out of the hoop, down into the trough, into the sifter, inside the sifter there's two different screens.

The first screen has smaller holes in it, and as the chop passes over the screen, the smaller pieces of chop fall out into the first bin.

That's what you call cornmeal.

As the larger pieces of the chop move on down the sifter, it comes across another screen that has larger holes in it.

That's where the larger pieces fall out into another bin, and that's grits.

The only difference in cornmeal and grits is that cornmeal is a smaller particle than grits.

As it continues down the screen, the trash, or chicken scratch, goes into the last bin.

[machinery rattling loudly] Here we have examples of some millstones that were brought in for display for this mill.

These stones are smaller than the stones that are inside.

The ones inside are 48 inches in diameter.

What I want to show you today is the most important part of the mill, and that's the stones that grinding of the corn.

These two examples here are both runner stones.

There's two stones inside the mill.

There's a bed stone that's at the bottom.

It's stationary... it doesn't turn.

The runner stone is the top stone, and it's the one that turns about 100 rpm.

You can see lines in the stone.

Those are called furrows.

A short, tapered area goes up to a flat place called the land.

There's several patterns you can put on a stone, but in this area, the pattern you see here is usually what we find.

There's usually a main furrow and then three smaller furrows going into it.

I want to show you a piece of equipment the miller uses.

If the mill runs every day of the week, usually the stones have to be sharpened once a year.

To do that, you have separate the stones, lay 'em over and put them on the floor, and then the miller would lay down on the stones and use, what they call a miller's pick.

Actually, it's a small hammer made out of steel.

This is a more modern one.

But use this, and these stones in here, it took about 3 1/2 days to sharpen the stones, and I'll show you about what it looks like.

[pick clinking on millstone] [pick clinking on millstone] [pick clinking on millstone] In 1825, there was a Hagood's Store here, and we feel like there was a smaller mill here with maybe a 10-foot wheel.

In 1856, this mill building was built, and a 20-foot wheel, that you see here, was in place.

The tailrace that supplies the water goes across over to the bank.

And then there was a ditch was dug about 1200 feet up the creek.

There was a small dam there to divert the water into the ditch.

Water came down the ditch, through the tailrace, and over the wheel to supply the power for the mill.

The wheel is 20 feet in diameter.

It weighs about 3,000 pounds.

The wheel generates about 22 horsepower, or it supplies that much power to the mill, although we don't use all of that in the mill.

[water roaring] (Angle) Hagood Mill is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

[water roaring] [vehicular noise] On Christmas Eve, 1890, the South Carolina legislature granted a charter to the Pickens Railroad Company.

Construction was a tedious process, with grading done by men wielding picks, while horses and mules pulled earth away in drag pans.

After eight years, the railroad was ready for its inaugural run to Easley, 9 miles away.

Free rides were offered, whistles blew, and excitement was at a fever pitch.

It is told that a young man, curious to see what would happen, laid a spike upon a rail.

He got more than he bargained for.

The train hit the spike, left the tracks, and overturned.

No one was seriously injured, but all aboard were terrified, and the incident plunged the railroad company into debt from which it did not recover for 15 years.

[vehicular noise] The locomotive was fondly called the Doodle, because, without a place to turn around, it headed into Easley and backed its way to Pickens, resembling, some thought, a doodlebug.

[machine whirring] Since 1871, news of the Doodle and every other event in Pickens County has been reported by the "newspaper with a conscience," "The Pickens Sentinel."

This community paper has never missed printing a weekly issue and is the oldest continuous business in the county.

In March of 1873, when the "Sentinel" was out of newsprint and a new supply did not arrive by train as expected, quick-thinking management condensed that week's edition and printed it on Blue Horse notebook paper.

During the Depression, the newspaper contained only four pages and was kept operating by a barter system.

A dollar's worth of produce, eggs, or firewood would buy a year's subscription or advertisements.

[whirring] One popular place to meet and discuss local news is the Feed Room, a family restaurant filled with fascinating memorabilia.

Meet Harold McElhannon, owner and collector.

(Harold McElhannon) I've always been a collector of sorts-- stuff you see on the walls, I've been a coin collector-- and a state trooper friend of mine came in one afternoon and was looking at my walls of the other farm equipment and memorabilia of that type, and he said, "I can't believe, with all this junk, you have no Coca-Cola."

I said, "Well, why should I want Coca-Cola?"

He said, "It's highly collectable."

So he goes out to the car, his patrol car, and he brings in this can.

This is my first Coke item, seven years ago.

It's a can from the '60s.

It's a steel can.

He had no idea what he was involving me in.

Now every time he walks in and sees my collection in this little small area, these are articles he could have had, had he left me out of the picture.

So I'm delighted, and he's a little remorseful that I got into the business and that's what started it, right there.

In the beginning, I was collectin' just local, goin' to places around here in the rural stores that I grew up with, and I would talk 'em out of some items.

Then as the collection began to grow-- as you know, we have a flea market here in town, here in Pickens that's known over several states-- people have learned that I'm a Coke collector, and they've seen my collection.

So, I have one man that calls me out of Greenville, Tennessee quite often and says, "I'm coming down to Pickens and have a so-and-so.

Would you like it?"

I say, "I'm always interested in seein'."

When he brings it down, I determine at that time whether I want or can afford it.

I have a lot of things that come out of Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and this state.

My fondest pieces are the things that have come to me by the way of the people that I have known personally, like my deceased schoolteacher.

She had some items left in her desk, and her son was kind enough to say, "Hey, Mother still has some old Coke stuff in her desk that I've never cleaned out.

If you want 'em, you can have 'em."

Those are some of my cherished items.

One interesting story on a clock that I have up there.

This lady came in.

She lived in someplace in North Carolina.

She just happened to look on the wall, and she says, "My husband has a clock like that."

And I was kidding about something like that and I said, "Let me get my hat...

I'm goin' home with you."

She said, "I live in North Carolina."

I said, "It doesn't matter.

Give me directions to your home."

I was at her house, and bought the clock, and was on the way back before she ever got there.

So, I'll go any place to get Coke.

Just give me some idea as to where it is, and I'm on the way.

The thing I like about this is the chase.

Coke within itself is a highly prized collectable because it's been around since 1886.

There's no such thing as a complete Coke collection, but all of us collectors take pride in the more scarce items that we can acquire.

Not that I have that much that's valuable and rare, but it all has its own little story behind it.

I try not to put one over the other as far as which I like the best.

I like to think people come for the food, but people do come to see the collection.

We serve Coca-Cola, but the ironic part about that is I do not drink Coca-Cola.

I've just never been a soda person.

I enjoy collecting, but I would be their worst, uh... way of advertisement for Coca-Cola, on what I consume myself.

But I enjoy the collection.

[no audio] (Angle) A different kind of collection can be viewed at the Irma Morris Museum housed in this Greek Revival style house.

Built in 1856 by James Hagood, one of the county's founding commissioners, it was moved here from old Pickens in 1868.

In 1955, the house was sold to Irma Morris, who willed it and all its English and American furniture, paintings, and art objects, some more than 300 years old, to the local historical society.

Collectors from far and wide know Pickens as the place with a huge flea market.

Every Wednesday morning long before dawn, sellers set out their wares, and buyers begin to search for trinkets, antiques, and utilitarian objects.

The hunting ground covers an area roughly the size of two football fields and is an enthusiast's heaven.

[indistinct background conversation] At 1,050 feet above sea level, Pickens was the highest unincorporated town in South Carolina.

Still, it considers itself a foothills town, not a mountain town.

That's probably because it sits below Table Rock, an imposing 3200-foot formation with a nearly vertical granite face.

Native Americans believed the flat summit was a favorite dining place of a gigantic chieftain god.

Table Rock State Park is one of South Carolina's largest, with 3,000 acres, a 10-mile hiking trail, nature center, picnic areas, and restaurant.

We are so glad that you could come with us to Pickens and hope that you'll join us again for "Palmetto Places."

Until then, I'm Joanna Angle, inviting you to discover South Carolina... smiling faces, beautiful places.

♪ ♪ (female singer) ♪ And here we live, ♪ ♪ within this land ♪ ♪ of mountains' edge and ocean's shore.

♪ ♪ A land of strength... a land of grace... ♪ ♪ of men and women gone before.

♪ ♪ So many smiling faces here, ♪ ♪ so many memories still to come.

♪ ♪ Beautiful places we hold dear ♪ ♪ in this our home.

♪ (choir joins) ♪ South Carolina, always near... ♪ ♪ and always hooommmme.... ♪♪ ♪