The Florence Morning News
July 27, 1963

LANE WAS ONCE BUSTLING TOWN
(click heading for image of original document)
Tenth Installment
By Henry E. Davis

 

During the ascendancy of the long leaf pine, the men who milled it scorned the loblolly pine that covered much of the lowlands of the Lowcountry. In the late 1890s, however, the loblolly pine suddenly emerged as the dominant timber tree of the Lowcountry and has held that position ever since. The Atlantic Coast Lumber Company, later reorganized as the Atlantic Coast Lumber Corporation, established in 1898 in Georgetown, South Carolina, the world's largest sawmill for the manufacture of loblolly pine lumber. This plant was only one of several saw mills that located there, the others, however, being smaller. One of these was a cypress mill. 

In less than five years, Georgetown became the lumber manufacturing metropolis of the state. The product of these mills was transported by ocean- going vessels, but the only feasible access to Georgetown was over the Georgetown and Western Railroad, which operated a double passenger service to and from Lane. 

In the vicinity of Georgetown were located also some of the best and largest private hunting preserves on the whole South Atlantic coast. Millions of ducks swarmed these preserves during the winter season. The proprietors of these preserves and their guests had to reach them through Georgetown, to which they were transported by the railroad. 

So it came to pass that this railroad, only 36 miles in length, transported more men of distinction and influence in the persons of the lumber companies' owners and operators, the business and professional men of Georgetown and other sections, and the owners and guests of the great game preserves, than other rail line of similar length in the state. Probably the most distinguished patron of this railroad was ex-President Grover Cleveland who over it visited Georgetown several times to shoot ducks in the nearby game preserves.

For a period of around 60 years, Lane was the most important small town in the eastern section of South Carolina. This position it achieved and maintained because it was the junction of three railroads, and through it flowed much of the traffic of the Lowcountry. It was the sole gateway to Georgetown, which as has been seen, had attained to a high position as a manufacturing center. 

Through the Central Railroad, Lane was also a gateway from much of the Lowcountry to Columbia, and for approximately 70 years the railroads of the large farm and home site of Mr. W.D. Bryan. When he acquired the property, it was known as Green's Old Field, and was the abandoned home and farm of Col. Green, an Englishman, who with his wife, resided there in the ante-bellum days. 

In my youth, one of the old-timers, Mr. John Cooper, lived on a farm near the Santee road, in the Suttons community, about 10 miles below Gourdin. As a young man, he lived in the home of, and worked for, Col. Green. Relating in his old age some of his experiences there, he said he was a special favorite of Mrs. Green, who used to call him and say, "John, we need some fresh meat, so go down in the bay and kill us a deer, and John, be sure not to kill a poor one." The old man said deer were more plentiful than rabbits and ran in herds, and as a consequence, he had no trouble in speedily filling the good lady's order. 

What a change in that section today! The great deer herds are gone; the Bryan farm is gone; and even the two bays are gone. Brierbed and Watson's Half- Acre, with hundreds of acres of adjoining uplands were cleared, and these with the Bryan farm were converted into a great stock ranch, called Scottswood, owned by out-of-state investors. 

The proud and lordly bucks and the mincing does that in former days roamed these lands as their homes were supplanted in their lush pastures by white-faced bulls, steers and cows. The stock ranch proved a financial failure and has been abandoned. The livestock and machinery have all been sold, and the owners of the property are proceeding apace to convert it by reforestation into a vast tract of pine timber. That this is the part of wisdom is evidenced by what is taking place at nearby Lane.