“G” is for the Greenville and Columbia Railroad. The Greenville and Columbia Railroad was the first railroad to enter the South Carolina upcountry. The road was chartered in 1845.The circuitous 160-mile route had spurs that ran through Abbeville and Anderson. By 1859 other lines connected Laurens and Spartanburg with the Greenville and Columbia. Finally, the ambitious Blue Ridge Railroad was supposed to run from Anderson through the mountains to tap the commerce of the Ohio Valley. The grandiose scheme had gotten no further than Walhalla when the Civil War began. The line suffered tremendous property damage during the war and lost sixty miles of track to flooding in 1866. It went bankrupt and by 1893, through a series of mergers, the Greenville And Columbia Railroad had become part of the Southern Railway System.
“G” is for the Greenville and Columbia Railroad
