Ware Shoals, SC

Ware Shoals is a town spread across Abbeville, Greenwood, and Laurens counties along the Saluda River. The shoals gave the place its name, and William Ware’s early gristmill at Rutledge Ford made the river a working crossing long before the mill town arrived. Benjamin Riegel completed a power plant in 1904 and a textile mill in 1906, and the mill, company store, railway, and utilities then laid out much of the town’s early civic life. The old mill economy is history now, but the river still gives Ware Shoals its local shape.

Ware Shoals High School occupies a 1926 building that remains one of the state’s older school buildings in use, while the former Emma Maddox School is part of the current elementary campus. Riegel Stadium, built in 1931, still belongs to the high-school landscape. The town hall occupies the old company-store building, another reminder of how closely work and public life once sat together. Ware Shoals is a river town whose county lines cross the same streets that carry school traffic, local errands, and the remnants of a once-large textile center.