Pelzer, SC

Pelzer is an Anderson County town along the Saluda River, with 1,344 residents at the 2020 census. It grew from a mill village founded in 1881 by Francis J. Pelzer, after the Pelzer Manufacturing Company chose the river for power. The first mill opened in 1882; more followed, with two dams generating electricity for the textile operation. Pelzer became one of the first southern mill villages to be fully electrified, and the company built homes, schools, and other facilities around the work.

The town's boundaries tell another part of the story. The historic mill community was larger than the original incorporated slice, and residents brought more of it into Pelzer's limits in 2015. West Pelzer sits along the western edge, while Highway 8 follows the old main street through the mill landscape. The mills are closed, but the Saluda, mill sites, managers' houses, and the Pelzer Historical Society keep the industrial past close at hand. Pelzer is not a generic old mill town; it is a place where water power, worker housing, and town lines all show how one company once arranged a whole community.