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"P" is for the Paper and Pulpwood Industry

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"P" is for the Paper and pulpwood industry. The first paper mill in South Carolina was operating in Columbia by 1806. Over the next fifty years, other mills opened including the Bath Paper Mill near Edgefield. By 1893 James Lide Coker of Hartsville had organized the first company in the state to make wood pulp for paper production on a commercial scale. That mill evolved into SONOCO. By the middle of the 1930s, with the arrival of WESTVACO in Charleston County and International Paper in Georgetown, paper manufacturing assumed an important place in the state's economy. After World War II, other manufacturers including Bowater, Union Camp, and Georgia-Pacific opened facilities. Improved management and utilization of the state's forests coincided with the rise of the growth and development of the paper and pulpwood industry in South Carolina. 

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.