From the Memory Vault: Lone Star will never fade away completely for me
I recently read an article by the esteemed Southern writer, Tom Poland, about a place that has captured my imagination and photographic spirit of discovery since I first saw it in 1974 — the ghost town and rural community of Lone Star, located in the south-central part of South Carolina in Calhoun County, not far from Lake Marion. During that first visit 50 years ago I captured an image in black and white that I have held onto in the decades since. In fact, I included it in a solo 2008 exhibit of my early photography, focusing on vernacular architecture and rural South Carolina scenes.
My first photo of Lone Star taken in the fall of 1973:
https://flic.kr/p/2p36kHZ
I have been back to Lone Star at least half a dozen times in the decades since that eye-opening and exciting visit as a novice photographer, documenting it as it continued to fade away, truly a lone star now in a very tiny galaxy of ghost towns with any visible remains still standing.
The essay by Tom Poland (linked below) got me musing again about the day trips that transported me to that peaceful rural community with it abandoned buildings amid train tracks running through what was once a bustling railroad town.
I did some more research and discovered an article with some exceptional old photos I had never seen before. I’ve linked that article also at the end of this esssy.
What follows next are essays and photos I have posted over the years about Lone Star. I was gone from South Carolina for most of the 80s, and haven’t anything to show during that period, but in the last couple of decades I’ve been there often enough to recapture earlier memories, document the state of the serenely forlorn ghost town that it is now more then ever, and imagine what life was like in a little railroad town a hundred years ago.
Here is an essay I wrote on August 23, 2000 about Lone Star:
https://www.opendiary.com/m/oswego/lone-star-part-2-1236916/
May 5, 2002:
Ever since my first visit to the little community of Lone Star near Lake Marion in central South Carolina, I have been intrigued with this ghost town, which on my first visit those many years ago had one operating general store, as far as I know. The other buidings were abandoned, boarded up and locked. They were just fading reminders of the bustling little main street that once existed there.
I always like to imagine what it was like a hundred years ago in the heyday of these towns, when farmers came to trade on Saturdays and stock up on supplies that had to last them a week or more or until they made the slow horse and buggy trip to town once again. People shared stories about weather, crops and politics as they made the rounds. It was a simpler time.
Lone Star never grew much as you can tell by the lonely asphalt road and few remaining structures. I was shocked when I drove into town a week ago and found two of the buildings gone in just the past seven years. I got out and took photos as I always do, but this time with the thought in mind that soon only the sturdy brick store that now houses the magistrate’s office (or seems to, at least) will remain for at least a while longer. The wooden buildings are gradually being torn down.
It makes me sad, but it also makes me realize that nothing stays the same. Just imagine all the memories from the decades when this community flourished, and there were no interstate highways, or jet planes or private planes or loud motorcycles to disturb the silence. Now the town is fading away to nothing amid the surrounding corn and soybean fields, planted each year despite years of droughts in recent years, a sign of hope and optimism. That is why I love to drive out there from Charleston in April or May. The land is being renewed even as the town is disappearing.
I don’t know when I will go back again, but I know I will.
Lone Star. I am just drawn to that place. It could be something to do with the name. I don’t know.
December 28, 2002:
Visiting the nearly abandoned town of Lone Star, about 80 miles from Charleston in Calhoun County, SC, is truly to step back in time. I have been to this ghost town on three occasions over the past 28 years. Each time is different and yet oddly the same. It’s an experience in imagining what this part of rural South Carolina was like decades ago. There were railraod tracks that came through and put the emerging town on the map in the 1880s. The county was once a prime cotton-growing area. There are farms and houses in the vicinity now, but the once prosperous town of Lone Star is no more.
And finally this from May 5, 2012:
https://www.opendiary.com/m/oswego/small-towns-lost-in-time-part-2-lone-star-sc-1237594/
Some photo albums:
Lone Star
https://www.flickr.com/gp/camas/9NzL8of225
Lone Star Fading
https://www.flickr.com/gp/camas/4y2Q7S5Q6Z
https://www.flickr.com/gp/camas/3M45C4b3fG
https://www.flickr.com/gp/camas/2oGC31y760
https://www.flickr.com/gp/camas/83x577n4ew
And finally, this Open Diary entry from October 23, 2021:
Backroads travel and discoveries:
Two articles of interest about Lone Star:
This is the excellent piece by a favorite Southern writer, Tom Poland that I mentioned earlier:
And this article which has some old and rare documents and photos:
https://www.randomconnections.com/lone-star-barbecue-mercantile-and-ghost-town/
Faded, but still standing. But for how long?
Loved the photos John. I remember going to Lone Star with you all those years ago.