Driving into Union, SC on 176, I pass the dying mall. The Belk's sign is down and a banner proclaims "Gone Out of Business". Only the Fogata Mexican Restaurant remains.
It is eleven miles after turning right on Sardis Road to the Rose Hill Platation built by William Gist. It has finally stopped raining and tonight it is to turn cool, a normal cool for this time of year. It has been so warm and wet, the the hills and grassland pastures are bright green, the early forsythia is blooming its' yellow bells. Crab apples and even early cherries have pink blossoms. At one sheltered spot, daffodils are in bloom.
Hardwood trees are bare so that the big clumps of miseltoe are visible. Along the road are mobile homes, trailers , cows and goats in pastures eating the green grass. Here and there is a large newly built home down a long tree lined drive. On the left is O'Shield's Deer Processing and then Fast Al's Oil Change. Fast Al also has a sign advertising PIGS FOR SALE with a picture of a pink pig. Soon I am in Sumter National Forest with pristine woods of tall pines, crossing the Tyger River over flowing its banks far into the forest, then over an old narrow red bridge over Fairforest Creek, also overflowing far and wide, past a shooting range and a Wildfowl Area. It is still hunting season and small pickups are parked nose first on dirt roads.
Rose Hill is on the right, a beautiful yellow stucco framed colonial home with brick underneath. I park my car and get out wearing my orange vest so that the hunters will not think I am a deer. The ranger office is in the back of the old kitchen separate from the main house where according to the ranger, squirrels come in to try and eat the fake vegetables on the shelves. E. Moses signs us up, just me and 7 others and we take the trail behind the picnic shelter (there is a 2 mile trail which shoots down to the Tyger River which today is partially flooded). We walk to the constant sounds of gun shots from the shooting range two miles away. Ranger Moses will take visitors on three tours of the home in the afternoon, but for the trail, she tells us about the land, how the early American Natives were mostly nomadic at least 12,000 years ago or more. Later they cultivated very small gardens of berries and herbs. When the Europeans came, they planted cotton in this hilly space. They just plowed downhill and the water ran off the nutrients. Today, lydar, a kind of ground X-ray, is being used to find out more about the history of the land.
She tells us some spicey tales about the Gists and the Bobo family who had a similar mansion at Cross Keys on Highway 49. The brother in lawof William Gist, Samuel Rice, shot and killed one of the Bobo men just as he was sitting on the street in Union. Over a woman, they say. William gist was with him. Gist was in several duels one where he killed a man. Nothing was done about these killings. Of course, William Gist was the governor.
It was the Wild Upstate. Now and then, it still is. Today no one was shot by deer hunters.
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