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“C” is for Clemson

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  “C” is for Clemson [Pickens County, population 11,939]. This small college town began as the Town of Calhoun, incorporated in 1892, and located about a mile from the new campus of Clemson Agricultural College. The Calhoun Land Company owned six hundred acres along the Charlotte Air Line Railway [later the Southern Railway], but little existed there except the depot. The train depot proved essential to the town’s prosperity. In 1943, a residents’ petition resulted in a vote to change the name to the town to Clemson. During the 1960s the city of Clemson tripled in area due to an aggressive annexation policy—and the population grew six hundred percent between 1960 and 2000. The Clemson Area Chamber of Commerce adopted “In Season Every Season” as its slogan, emphasizing that Clemson had more to offer than football games.

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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.