“C” is for the Cherokee Foothills Scenic Highway. The 112-mile Cherokee Foothills Scenic Highway provides a richly attractive alternative to I-85, with which it links at each end: at the Georgia state line in southeastern Oconee County and in Gaffney in Cherokee County. In between the highway rises through the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in northern Oconee, Pickens and Greenville Counties and across the rolling terrain of Spartanburg and Cherokee Counties. In addition to the scenic vistas of Table Rock, Caesar’s Head, and Sassafras, the highway passes many waterfalls—including Whitewater Falls. The area is culturally rich as the ancestral home of the Cherokees, who called the mountains “the Great Blue Hills of God.” The Cherokee Foothills route was designated a Scenic Highway in 1976 and a National Scenic Byway in 1998.
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.