Branch History
The Old Stage Road ran from Laurens to Greenville, and where it crossed an
old Cherokee trail that came to be known as the Georgia Road, a village grew
up. In the 1830s an enterprising farmer from the Laurens District, Peter
Simpson, set up a blacksmith shop there, and so the name Simpsonville arose. When
the post office came a few years later, it was called Plain, but "Simpsonville" eventually
won out as the name of the place. The 1880s brought a high school and
several cotton gins to serve the nearby farmers. Soon after incorporation
in 1901, the town persuaded entrepreneurs to build the Simpsonville Cotton
Mill, which remained the largest employer for decades. What spurred Simpsonville's
present growth was the arrival of the major water main and the widening of
Highway 276 in the 1950s.
Simpsonville's population growth has been remarkable. It was South
Carolina's fastest growing city from 1990 to 1992, and the fastest growing
city under 25,000 in the nation in 1994. Much of this expansion is as
a bedroom community for the metropolitan area, but Simpsonville also has its
own major industries. It draws crowds from far and wide for Freedom Weekend
Aloft at New Heritage Park, but there is still a downtown area with the old
train station and the clock tower.
The Simpsonville branch of the Greenville County Library opened in 1926. Its
beginning was quite humble, merely one shelf of books located in the furniture
store at 104 South Main Street. The library truck came around every few
weeks to provide a new selection of books. In 1940 the library moved
into a building built by the WPA, which it shared with community groups who
held meetings there. In 1968 the library was expanded to occupy the
whole building, giving it 1800 sq. ft. of space. In the 1990s the need
for a larger library roused the community to action. A former mayor and
his wife donated land near downtown Simpsonville, and fundraising took such
interesting forms as a Christmas tour of historic Simpsonville homes. The
new building, known as the Hendricks Branch, opened on April 6, 1997.
Sources:
- Raper, Barbara Spillers. "From ‘Plain' to the Present." In Bicentennial
Souvenir Book: Mauldin Simpsonville Fountain Inn. N.p.: Golden
Strip Civitan Club, 1976. N.p.
- Richardson, Steve. "Simpsonville." In The
South Carolina Encyclopedia. Ed. Walter Edgar. Columbia: University
of South Carolina Press, 2006. p. 870.
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