Here’s the interior of a building somewhere in South Carolina. Where is it and what’s its importance, if any? Send your name, hometown and guess to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
Last week’s mystery, “Old stone building,” showed an old lockkeeper’s building at Rocky Mount Canal near Great Falls in Chester County. The old photo was from the Library of Congress. Readers say it is now located at Landsford Canal State Park in Chester County along the Catawba River.
Penny Forrester of Tallahassee, Fla., provided some interesting detail: “The canal, the brainchild of Robert Mills, was built beginning in 1820, using both slave and free laborers. It was the northernmost in a series of four canals built on the Catawba and Wateree rivers to provide a water route between the upcountry and the towns on the fall line.
“The canal was about two miles long, 12-feet wide and 10-feet deep. There were four lifting locks and one guard lock providing 32 feet of descent. It was named for local landowner Thomas Land. The canal was completed in three years but one of the locks collapsed due to its inferior foundation. The canal was little used, and traffic ceased by 1840. The bridge design was an almost exact twin of the Poinsett Bridge in upper Greenville County.”
Congratulations to others who identified it: Jay Altman and Elizabeth Jones, both of Columbia; George Graf of Palmyra, Va.; Steve Willis of Lancaster; David Lupo of Mount Pleasant; Bill Segars of Hartsville; Allan Peel of San Antonio, Texas; Frank Bouknight of Summerville; and Pat Keadle of Perry.
- Send us a mystery picture. If you have a photo that you believe will stump readers, send it along (but make sure to tell us what it is because it may stump us too!) Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com and mark it as a photo submission. Thanks.
We Can Do Better, South Carolina!