Tracking the Tracks

I was invited to tag along with Mark recently on a mission to trace the route of a long abandoned rail line.

Since my discovery of it, I've been a fan of Mark's blog because he does such careful research on the history of the places he talks about.  When he invited me to join him I was excited to learn some history and meet Mark in person.

Our mission on this trip was to trace the Swamp Rabbit rail line north from Cleveland, SC.
We met at the post office.  Well, Mark met at the post office while I headed up a mountain.  This is what I get for blindly following Google without thinking.  Once I was up on the mountain I had no cell signal to get a message out that I made a ignorant wrong turn.

While I was in the wrong place I decided to stop and take this photo.

Eventually I found my way to the Post Office and Mark forgave my tardiness.

He had already done reading and research on this topic and knew pretty well where the tracks used to run.  Our job was to try and verify what he knew.

We pulled the cars over and walked along the river until we found this remains of a trestle.

Based on the angle that they were facing we turned around and looked at the hill behind us.

 There was a large square cut in the top of the hill.  Now, this photo alone may not be very exciting to look at.  But this was very exciting to be finding evidence of a rail.  I imagined the tracks running over where I was standing and up to the hill.

We made our way to the top to stand in the cut area and we found the clear path continued.

As we followed this path we found another small set of trestles crossing over a small creek.  More proof!

Eventually we found our path running off the side of the hill and facing this bridge.  A closer look at the bridge showed what appeared to be old stone work around the banks supporting the bridge.  Most of the support structure underneath was wood.   Did a train cross at this point before the road was built?  Other bridges along this road are built with concrete block and metal supports.

Some of the additional areas we wanted to explore are now private property and inaccessible.

On our way out we climbed down to the river to get a closer look at these supports from some structure.  There was a wall and two columns.  The impressive part to me was the beauty in which this column was constructed.  Looking closely you will see small rocks crammed in to fill the gaps between the larger stones.  I didn't notice any evidence of mortar in this column.

My excitement about the trip was not a let down.  I learned and saw some history about South Carolina and I got to meet Mark in person.  We had a great day of exploring and hopefully we'll get the chance to do some adventures in 2013.

Mark has a lot more detailed information and photos of our trip on his blog.