Hemingway, SC

Hemingway is a Williamsburg County town in northeastern South Carolina, with 504 residents in the 2020 census. Until the early twentieth century it was a crossroads called Lamberts. Dr. W.C. Hemingway sold land for a Seaboard Air Line Railroad depot, and the town took his name as the tracks turned the crossroads into a market center. Cotton and tobacco came first; later crops included soybeans, wheat, vegetables, and products from the surrounding pine country.

The Pee Dee River remains part of the town’s wider geography, with Snows Lake nearby and Myrtle Beach close enough to shape commuting patterns. Every spring, the South Carolina BBQ Shag Festival fills the ball fields with a barbecue cookoff, Carolina shag dancing, music, vendors, and carnival rides. The festival began in 1987 and is now the town’s signature gathering. Hemingway also carries an industrial chapter through Tupperware’s former distribution and manufacturing presence. It is a Pee Dee town where a railroad depot, farm crops, barbecue smoke, shag steps, and the river corridor all meet.