Lamar, SC

Lamar is a Darlington County town whose name is newer than its crossroads. The community was known as Devil’s Woodyard, then Mims Crossroads, and later Lisbon before the state chartered Lamar in 1890. Captain Mims’s plantation became the meeting point for roads, a store, a doctor’s office, and a post office; the town grew when the Charleston, Sumter and Northern Railroad laid tracks through town and made Lamar a market and shipping point. A second railroad arrived in 1913, tying the town to more of the Pee Dee.

Rail service disappeared after World War II, but Lamar kept its grid of streets, broad Main Street, and small-town errands. The Lamar Library sits on East Main Street, and Lamar High School carries a proud athletic history with 18 state championships and more than 50 region titles. The town’s April Egg Scramble Jamboree brings a parade, live music, crafts, pageant, and home cooking into the same streets that once handled tobacco and cotton traffic. Lamar’s local scoop is a railroad town that lost its rails but kept the shape they gave it.