Qualla: Florence, South Carolina

Florence, South Carolina: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

General William Harllee built his house at a railroad crossing in the 1850s and named the community after his daughter Florence. He could not have known how prophetic the choice was. Florence the city was about to become a junction of junctions: three railroads, then two interstates, then the eastern terminus of I-20 and the great north-south spine of I-95, halfway between New York City and Miami. Harllee's daughter never lived in the place that bears her name. Today nearly forty thousand people do, in the tenth-largest city in South Carolina and the unrivaled commercial center of the Pee Dee.

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Florence, South Carolina: Where the Rails Met

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Florence's founding was an act of geography. In the 1850s the Wilmington and Manchester Railroad and the Northeastern Railroad were both pushing through the eastern Carolinas; their tracks crossed in what was then thinly settled coastal-plain country. A third line, the Cheraw and...

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Florence, South Carolina: The Stockade and Marian Wright Edelman

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

During the Civil War the Confederacy built the Florence Stockade just outside town to hold Union prisoners of war evacuated from Andersonville and other Georgia camps. Roughly 18,000 men were imprisoned at Florence; over 2,800 died of disease and exposure and were buried where Fl...

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Florence, South Carolina: Downtown, Rebuilt

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Florence's downtown had emptied out by the 1980s, the way most Southern downtowns did - the malls took the retail, the offices moved to the bypass. In 2010 the city launched a serious revitalization of the seventy-block central district. The Drs. Bruce and Lee Foundation Library,...

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Florence, South Carolina: Halfway Between Everything

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Florence's economy works because its location works. The intersection of I-95 (which runs from Maine to Miami) and I-20 (which runs from Florence to Texas) sits about halfway between New York and Miami. That has attracted distribution centers and regional headquarters: QVC's dist...

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Florence, South Carolina: Cale Yarborough, Henry Timrod, the Flamingos

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Florence has produced an unusual range of public figures. Cale Yarborough, NASCAR's four-time Daytona 500 champion, came up here. Buddy Baker, another Daytona 500 winner, was a Florence boy. Harry Carson, the New York Giants linebacker and Hall of Famer, came out of Florence. Reg...

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