Drayton, SC

Drayton is a Spartanburg County census-designated place on the edge of the Upstate's textile corridor. A post office has operated here since 1904, and the community took its name from William Henry Drayton, a South Carolina delegate to the Continental Congress. Spartanburg County School District 7 serves Drayton, with Spartanburg High School as the named public high school. The community's larger regional connections run through nearby Spartanburg. The mill pond is part of that surviving setting.

Drayton Mill gives the place a much larger industrial story than its CDP label suggests. The mill complex began in 1902, expanded with a company store in 1919 and a weaving building in 1928, and employed 1,200 people at its peak. The complex is listed on the National Register for both its Romanesque Revival architecture and its role in Spartanburg's textile economy. Its surviving buildings and mill-pond landscape sit alongside the residential community, so Drayton's identity joins a post-office neighborhood to one of the county's clearest textile landmarks.