I’m figuring that someone from Texas, the Lone Star state, must have settled here in Lone Star, South Carolina. When I arrive, the place certainly has the look of a Western ghost town. A two-story brick building is boarded up and locked. A white clapboard shack needs a fresh coat of paint, and is locked. The Lone Star S.C. Store has a barred front door with a sign telling me this is “Private Property.”
I approach one of the lone houses in Lone Star—standing there among acres of cotton fields in white bloom—and I knock on the door with my usual reluctance.
A vivacious poodle comes leaping out, followed by Martha Shirer, who has lived in Lone Star for 60 years. She gets straight to the point. Lone Star got its name, she says, “Because one day the train came by and saw a star up in the sky.”
But then she tells me something I always like to hear—to hold on a minute, she’s got to go get something.
“I was a paper clipper,” she says, as we flip through a thick three-ring binder full of laminated Times and Democrat newspaper articles that she’s cut out over the years.
When I get back home, I read the articles and find out that the town was supposed to be called Auburn, and that it was developed by the Pee Dee Land Company, back when the Atlantic Coastline Railroad laid tracks through the territory in 1893. Some stories back-up Martha Shirer’s lone-star-in-the-sky story, and some say it was indeed a homesick Texan who named the town.
More than a hundred years later, in 2000, four of the town’s buildings were moved to Santee to become the Lonestar Barbecue & Mercantile Tavern and Grill.
“One of the stores that went to Santee was the post office,” Martha Shirer tells me. “It took me a long time to accept it. It was like they tore up Lone Star. But then I came to think about it. All the stuff in there was being preserved, and the store was being preserved. But now it burned down—this past Christmas eve, I think it was.”
I approach one of the lone houses in Lone Star—standing there among acres of cotton fields in white bloom—and I knock on the door with my usual reluctance.
A vivacious poodle comes leaping out, followed by Martha Shirer, who has lived in Lone Star for 60 years. She gets straight to the point. Lone Star got its name, she says, “Because one day the train came by and saw a star up in the sky.”
But then she tells me something I always like to hear—to hold on a minute, she’s got to go get something.
“I was a paper clipper,” she says, as we flip through a thick three-ring binder full of laminated Times and Democrat newspaper articles that she’s cut out over the years.
When I get back home, I read the articles and find out that the town was supposed to be called Auburn, and that it was developed by the Pee Dee Land Company, back when the Atlantic Coastline Railroad laid tracks through the territory in 1893. Some stories back-up Martha Shirer’s lone-star-in-the-sky story, and some say it was indeed a homesick Texan who named the town.
More than a hundred years later, in 2000, four of the town’s buildings were moved to Santee to become the Lonestar Barbecue & Mercantile Tavern and Grill.
“One of the stores that went to Santee was the post office,” Martha Shirer tells me. “It took me a long time to accept it. It was like they tore up Lone Star. But then I came to think about it. All the stuff in there was being preserved, and the store was being preserved. But now it burned down—this past Christmas eve, I think it was.”
