Six battles in four weeks. That is what the summer of 1780 dropped on the patch of South Carolina foothills now called Spartanburg County - Cedar Springs, Gowen's Fort, Earle's Ford, Fort Prince, a second Cedar Spring, and Musgrove Mill, all of them between July and August, all of them inside what would later become a single county. Two more battles, one of them Kings Mountain and the other Cowpens, would tip the southern theater of the Revolution. Spartanburg's name came from the Spartanburg Regiment, the local militia that fought through all of it. The town that emerged after the war was named for soldiers, not generals - and the place has carried that practical, unsentimental temperament forward through every reinvention since.
By the mid-19th century the railroads converged on Spartanburg from so many directions that maps showed it as a wheel hub. The nickname stuck. The town incorporated in 1831. Textile expansion began in 1877 and ran hard for three decades - between 1880 and 1910, industrialists built nearly 40 textile mills, and the county at one point held over half a million spindles. Camp Wadsworth west of the city trained more than 100,000 men during World War I. Camp Croft south of the city trained more than 200,000 during World War II, contributing a $2.5 million payroll that kept Spartanburg solvent through the war. The mill villages began emptying out in the 1950s as rising wages and automobiles dispersed the workforce. By 1970 mill society was effectively over. The 1970s opened a new chapter that culminated when international manufacturing - BMW most visibly - arrived to anchor the modern economy.
Daniel Morgan Square sits at the city's center, named for the general who beat the British at Cowpens. The original courthouse stood here, near a spring that now runs underground. The oldest buildings on the square date to the 1880s. A few blocks away, the Magnolia Street Train Depot houses the Amtrak station for the Crescent line (which runs daily between New York and New Orleans), the visitor's bureau, and the Hub City Farmers Market. Three eighteenth-century houses preserved by the Spartanburg County Historical Association anchor the suburban edges: Walnut Grove Plantation near Roebuck, the simpler Seay House, and the unusual three-story Flemish-bond brick Price House. The Chapman Cultural Center concentrates the visual and performing arts. Spartanburg Memorial Auditorium opened in the 1950s as 'the Showplace of the South' and still hosts the region's major events.
Glendale Mill on Lawson's Fork stopped operating in the 1960s and burned in 2004 - the gigantic main mill is gone, but the company store and the Victorian mill office remain, the latter restored as a field center for Wofford College's Environmental Studies program. The discontinued Methodist church at the top of the hill became the Glendale Outdoor Leadership School. Beaumont Mill north of downtown was renovated to house Spartanburg Regional Healthcare's administrative offices. The Pacolet Historic Mill District, designed by landscape architect Earle Draper in the early 1900s, has the largest concentration of Arts and Crafts homes in South Carolina - over 250 of them - plus paved infrastructure, concrete pergolas, and an amphitheater that seats 2,500 on the river. The pattern is the same across the county: industrial bones turned into civic spaces, residential streets, schools and parks.
The Beacon Drive-In claims to be the world's largest seller of iced tea, an institution where you'd better know your order before J.C. calls for it - 'walk and talk.' Wade's Restaurant earned its reputation on yeast rolls and country cooking. Wasabi Sushi covers the other end of the spectrum, fresh and reasonably priced, with Monsoon Noodle House and Lime Leaf bringing Asian fusion to Morgan Square. Cottonwood Trail follows Lawson's Fork east of downtown with picnic areas and a raised walkway over wetlands. Hatcher Garden and Woodland Preserve, ten acres carved from an eroding gully by a retired social activist, opens 365 days a year free of charge. Croft State Park, on the grounds of the old WWII training camp, offers horseback riding and hiking. The Hub City sits an hour and fifteen minutes by I-26 from Asheville, the Appalachian Trail, and the Blue Ridge Parkway - close enough that the mountains shape the weather even before they shape the weekend.
Spartanburg sits at 34.95 degrees N, 81.93 degrees W in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, with a city population around 39,400 and a county population of roughly 265,800. Best viewed at 4,500-6,500 feet MSL. Two airports serve the area: Spartanburg Downtown Memorial (KSPA, 3 nm south of downtown, single runway 5/23) for general aviation, and Greenville-Spartanburg International (KGSP, 12 nm west on I-85 Exit 57) for commercial traffic. I-85 runs east-west along the city's northern edge; I-26 runs north-south to the west. The Blue Ridge Escarpment rises sharply 25 nm northwest. Inland location offers protection from Atlantic hurricane direct hits, though tropical systems still deliver heavy rain.