Here’s a classic white building somewhere in South Carolina. Tell us where and what its significance might be. Send your best guess to feedback@statehousereport.com. And don’t forget to include your name and the town in which you live.
Our previous Mystery Photo
Our April 3 image, “Old bridge,” is a photo of the 1898 hydroelectric plant at Gervais Street in Columbia on the Columbia Canal, as recognized by several alert readers: George Graf of Palmyra, Va.; Jay Altman of Columbia; Dale Rhodes of Richmond, Va.; Frank Bouknight of Summerville; Henry Eldridge of Tega Cay; Jacie Godfrey of Florence; David Lupo of Mount Pleasant; and Vic Carpenter of Lugoff, who remembers rafting past it years ago.
Lupo shared, “The canal branches off of the Broad River and rejoins it after the Broad had merged with the Saluda to form the Congaree River. The Wikipedia article on the canal notes that the original canal was built in the 1820s to allow boats to avoid the rapids near the river junction. It was redesigned in the 1880s and rebuilt in its current location as a power source with a hydro-electric plant. The Columbia Canal is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.”
Graf added, “I read last year that the Columbia Canal — the main source of drinking water for a massive swath of the city, including the University of South Carolina, the downtown core, numerous hospitals and Fort Jackson — has not been repaired. The 60-foot wide breach in the western levee of the canal, along the Congaree River near the State Museum, is still there. Just north of the breach, a thick rock dam — one that governmental officials scrambled to put together in the days following the flood — still stands firm, holding in the river water that is later purified at the city’s Canal Treatment Plant and piped out to the city’s water customers. The canal … remains functional, but battered.”
- Send us a mystery: 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!