(male narrator) With Cheraw at the apex, the wedge is formed by the Black River on the south, the Waccamaw in the northeast, and the North Carolina border on the north.

Through this triangle runs the Great Pee Dee River, joined at the delta by the Lynches, Sampit, and Waccamaw, where it loses its identity like all great rivers when absorbed by the sea.

♪ ♪ ♪ Following these fluid paths into the heavy forests of the Lowcountry, families in the 1730s began to establish settlements on the inlets and coves along these river banks.

They came from Beaufort, Charleston, Georgetown, from Pennsylvania, Delaware, and from England and France.

♪ Kingstree was first, a colorful name derived from the location of an extraordinarily tall pine tree serving as a landmark and used as a wilderness bulletin board.

♪ Other settlements came in rapid succession: Mars Bluff, later to be overshadowed by a railroad center called Florence; Long Bluff, changing to Greeneville and then to Society Hill.

♪ Paved roads not withstanding, this community is rural in appearance and content to be so.

Big, adequate homes shelter families exactly as they did a hundred years ago.

A horse and buggy driving into these front yards would still look in place.

The Society Hill library, now not open to the public, was built in 1822 and stands today.

It contained over 2,000 volumes by 1860.

Concern for the young men's education resulted in the establishment in 1777 of the St. David Academy.

Any list of South Carolina leaders over the past 200 years will show how great a contribution the academy has made to the state's history.

Between the Great Pee Dee and Little Pee Dee rivers lies Marion, seat of Marion County, which also underwent a name change in the late 1700s from Liberty to Marion, a change no doubt influenced by the famous Swamp Fox, Francis Marion, who based his Revolutionary War activities on Snow Island at the confluence of the Lynches and Great Pee Dee Rivers.

Then came Darlington, believed to be named for Darlington, England, home of the bishop of Darlington.

This town was still called the "village" as late as 1860.

This came about because Darlington grew up around the county courthouse, following the creation of the county by the 1785 South Carolina General Assembly.

♪ As these footholds took root, other towns came into being.

North of Kingstree lies Lake City, important as a strawberry center and for truck farming and pasture.

Much of its acreage is now devoted to the cultivation of tobacco.

♪ Hartsville, home of Coker College... ♪ ...a city where industry and agriculture have merged through the huge Sonoco paper tube plant and the Coker Experimental Farm, even now making important contributions to a revitalized agricultural economy.

Bennettsville, located in Marlboro County, once had the picturesque name "Beauty Spot" because of unexplained flower-covered meadowlands surrounded by dense woodlands.

Myrtle Beach, a tourist mecca, Carolina's "Sun Fun" city.

♪ In the 1840s came the railroads, one from Wilmington, one from Charleston, and a third from Cheraw and Darlington.

Mars Bluff and Darlington, 18 miles apart, were considered as a junction for the railroads, but citizens of these two communities, voicing objections to the noise of the trains and the type of people it would bring, forced the railroad owners to look elsewhere.

It is ironic that this decision would result in the present size and influence of the Pee Dee's most imposing municipality.

It was at Florence, midway between Mars Bluff and Darlington, that the junction was established, and with the railroads came people and commerce and growth.

In the beginning, the farms of the early settlers clung close to the river banks, the river being the vital connection with seaports to the south.

As families multiplied, however, more land was cleared to provide the growing population with food and clothing.

Additionally, the invention of the cotton gin created an insatiable demand for the white, fibrous boll which thrived in the Pee Dee climate.

Plantations began to increase in size and number around the turn of the century, and even before the railroad in the mid-1800s, cotton in important amounts was being ferried downriver to the coastal cities.

With the railroad came an expanding market for cotton and other commodities being produced in the Pee Dee.

One was strawberries in the Lake City area.

Another was tobacco.

Nine miles southwest of Florence lies Timmonsville.

♪ Named for John Morgan Timmons, a Baptist minister, Timmonsville is considered by many as the center of the tobacco industry in South Carolina.

This fantastically successful product has in recent years replaced cotton as the number-one money crop in the state.

Its effect on life in the Pee Dee can only be alluded to.

♪ No writer has been able to capture the feeling of a tobacco warehouse.

[auctioneer chanting] The staccato sing-song of the auctioneer as he reacts to the stimuli only he can recognize.

[auctioneer chanting] The smell of tobacco leaves, trucked in from the curing barns and stacked on endless rows of wooden pallets.

The sweet feeling of having survived another season of weather variables.

The anticipation of buying dresses, hats, shoes, and other items that are only dreams until the golden leaf is harvested, cured, and sold.

And the gnawing little worries that today's price may fall beneath yesterday's before your stacks go on the block.

No member of the family is immune to the happiness, excitement, worry, and hurly-burly.

♪ Non-family workers who did the stripping, lugging, topping, stringing, sticking, and hanging for the $6 and $8 a day, bask in an aura of well-being this time of year.

By hand tying, each worker feels that his contribution to the final disposition of the crop was vital to the year's success, and indeed it was.

♪ ♪ ♪ Machines are just beginning to effectively string the 700 sticks of tobacco that make up a curing barn of leaf.

But, very probably, hanging of the sticks of tobacco will always be done by hand.

In the beginning, great hogsheads of tobacco were freighted to Charleston and other seaports and then to England.

But as America grew, the population indulged more and more in the weed, and so less and less was shipped overseas.

Railroads began to transport the containers with greater frequency, and so railroad centers grew apace.

Having been chosen as the railroad center in the Pee Dee, Florence reaped the benefits.

The town itself got its name because of the railroad.

It was around 1850 that General W.W. Harllee, president of the Wilmington and Manchester Railroad, named the village of some 100 people for his daughter Florence.

A hundred years later, the village had grown into the major city in the Pee Dee, and today, it's close to having doubled its size in the last 20 years.

A fierce kind of pride is the heritage of those in the Pee Dee area who can trace family trees to those first families, and it also impregnates newcomers in a surprisingly short time.

Caught between the patronizing attitude of Lowcountry pioneer families and the not-dissimilar pose of those from the Columbia area and the Piedmont, Pee Dee residents are fortified with the knowledge that their families provided the bone and sinew, directed by Francis Marion, which turned the tide of battle against the British in the late 1700s.

This, in turn, foments the impression by all Pee Dee-ans that it's just a matter of time before this section of the state will have come into its rightful place of wealth and power.

And who can deny it?

Physical growth in the Florence area has been just short of fantastic.

Large expanses of fields that surrounded the town just a scant 10 years ago now boast huge industrial complexes that sing a different song, a louder and more fruitful song.

These factories have taken the people from the fields, introduced them to machines larger than the houses in which they live, taught them how to command the machines to create products they had only heard of, and not incidentally in the doing, improve their standard of living.

In the spirit of their forebears, they have not squandered this chance.

Mindful of what is yet to come, community leaders have taken the initiative, have begun preparing for bigness.

Shopping centers for suburbanites in surrounding towns have taken shape and continue to grow.

Proud, old buildings in downtown Florence, giving in to progress, are undergoing face-liftings which will retain tradition inside while entranceways display the modern shape of aluminum and glass.

Parking facilities, trees and shrubbery, covered walkways are the answers concerned urban merchants hope will neutralize the exodus of a growing number of shoppers.

Much credit has been given to the railroad in the growth pattern of Florence, and rightfully so.

But where the railroad has been the source of the town's biggest payroll for many years, new suppliers of income for Pee Dee citizens include such giants of industry as DuPont, Union Carbide, Kraft Paper, and others.

One man who has represented the area for many years, Senator Clyde Graham of Pamplico, believes that the best is yet to come.

However, the senator is aware that the very things which early settlers found appealing about the Pee Dee are still available for those who are still to come.

...tremendously benefited by having so many fine people from all over the world come to Florence County to live because of our railroad system.

And we have so many progressive farmers that have enabled the railroads to prosper, too, because of the tremendous amount of transportation they received by hauling lumber, turpentine, and cotton and tobacco and livestock on the railroads leading to and from Florence.

Industry comes where progress is already present.

We have all the needs for industry here.

It wasn't that the industry just happened to come here.

We have a fine system of highways all over the county.

We have a wonderful school system.

We have many fine towns in the county.

We have railroad transportation all over the county.

We also have many fine churches in this county.

We have a wonderful technical education center.

We have a branch of the University of South Carolina that will be a full-fledged four-year college in a few years.

We also have a health center, a huge chronic disease hospital, and a mental health center and an alcoholic center.

We have everything in Florence County that industry, in their various capacities, will need in the future.

Well, the Great Pee Dee River and the Lynches River border Florence County, and they are reservoirs that can be used now and in the future for an unlimited supply of fine drinking water or any other use we might have for it.

In addition to that, they are wonderful places for people to ride in boats... and recreation and parks.

They are invaluable for civilization and become more and more so every year.

We have a museum in Florence that is an outstanding contribution to our city.

We also have a wonderful library which we are trying to make a great statewide library center.

We have many cultural and religious organizations in the city that contribute to the greatness of our city and our community.

If we all get together and work together, we are just beginning to have great prosperity in this territory.

We are going to be one of the greatest sections in the state because of our recreation and our nearness to the beach and being midway between the north and the south and the east and the west.

We have a golden opportunity, and we are going to capitalize on it every day.

(narrator) When Henry Ford succeeded in parlaying some hand tools in his garage into a countrywide transportation revolution, he also created the need for a countrywide face-lifting of the road system.

Long, slender, steel bands stretching across the land spawning new communities in its wake, connecting the farmer with his market and the manufacturer with consumers, suddenly found vigorous competition from growing ribbons of macadam and concrete.

In many cases, these roadbeds ran along the railroad tracks, and engineers became aware of a growing number of highway boxcars, heavy with freight and heading for loading platforms, often within sight of the railroad station.

The highway system has grown with a terrible ferocity.

The roar of engines and the squeal of rubber against asphalt speaks with the exuberance and arrogance of youth, and the system grows bigger and bigger.

Ironically, the major contributions to this growth occurs on ribbons that have no beginning or ending.

The most famous of these is located just west of Darlington, South Carolina, the home of the Southern 500.

Here, amazingly efficient engines are tortured beyond belief to make their successors better and faster.

This kind of activity was begun to satisfy youth's desire to excel with machines, as young gentry earlier had raced their thoroughbred horses.

It was to be expected that crowds would gather to watch such contests.

Darlington County raced from obscurity to fame at over 150 miles an hour.

[engines roaring] The race produced records considered unbreakable, but each year, the Joe Weatherlys, the Fireball Roberts, and the Freddie Lorenzens returned to prove they were established just to be broken.

Their feats are chronicled in the perfectly reconditioned racers used by the champions and displayed in the Joe Weatherly Stock Car Museum adjacent to the track.

It was the late Bob Colvin's belief that the contribution to the automotive world made here should be remembered.

Directors of the track operate within the guidelines Bob so carefully prepared in the beginning.

Next door to this famous oval is held the world's largest automobile auction, an important segment of the county's economic well-being.

This preoccupation with cars has resulted in one of the state's best county road systems.

Credit for this must be given in part to the influence of the Southern 500.

But it must be shared with the political leadership of the county, which turned a need into a reality.

One of the state's first four-lane divided highways pulls Darlington and Florence to within 10 minutes of each other, and traffic is heavy at almost any hour.

As the Pee Dee grows, this rapid road communication allows a greater number of its citizens to participate in mushrooming activities and facilities.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ The hospital.

Historical shrines.

♪ ♪ A unique air-space museum.

♪ ["Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder"] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Libraries.

♪ ♪ Florence homes, from the humblest to the magnificent, speak authoritatively of ownership and personal achievement.

Recreational areas are used by all ages in healthy athletics.

This, then, is the Pee Dee, coming into being through its rivers, its lush forests, the fertility of its sandy soil, the tenacious spirit of its people... this above all.

And those who inherited this land have accepted the accelerated evolution from farm to factory.

Today the Pee Dee is learning to live at this faster pace, willing to adjust to the noise and the sort of people who come, not by railroad this time, but by car, truck, and jet airplane.

It isn't a village of 100 people who are benefiting now.

From Georgetown, to Sumter, to Cheraw, to Dillon, to Myrtle Beach, to Georgetown, the entire section is building a foundation to support this industrial influx.

The leadership in each county is actively supporting an increase in educational facilities.

Foremost in this is the tremendous stride being made in the expanding technical education centers.

♪ Road building, including two interstates and numerous farm-to-market projects, reflect the thinking of county delegations.

As the waters of the Black River, the Great Pee Dee, the Lynches, and the Waccamaw make their way to the sea, they carry with them evidence of having passed through a busy and prosperous land: the Pee Dee.

♪ Captioned by: CompuScripts Captioning www.compuscripts.com ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪