Blue Ridge Country Sept/Oct 2024 - 17

mill, The Market is home to budding entrepreneurs.
" We have a number of Main Street businesses who
REMEMBERING FRANK KILGORE
S
ix years and 35 towns ago,
I started writing " Our Blue
Ridge Towns. " I've driven
thousands of miles in our
mountains
and met many
skilled movers
and shakers,
devoted to
their towns in
creative, progressive
ways.
But it was my
time in tiny St.
Paul, Virginia,
(population 829) with lawyer
and writer Frank Kilgore in
2019 that showed me firsthand
what it meant to be a
rock-solid supporter of a place
and its people.
Kilgore was the son and
grandson of coalminers,
and read the law to pass the
Virginia bar. He knew the
deep history of his region and
shared it well-his law office
included a 2,000-square-foot
museum of Appalachian items
he'd collected over the years.
Frank wasn't afraid to use
his knowledge and writing
skill to champion his place,
writing numerous op-eds
challenging the Appalachian
stereotypes that run rampant.
He put his efforts into building
high-achieving coalfield
public schools, as well as the
Appalachian School of Law
and the Appalachian College
of Pharmacy. His love of the
outdoors and determination
to increase tourism resulted
in the Mendota Trail, Clinch
River State Park, and Channels
Recreation Area.
Post-COVID, Frank focused
on bringing new residents
into Wise and Russell counties.
" The mayor said I was
repopulating our community
one Yankee at a time! Hey, we
need their energy and new
ideas, " he emailed recently.
Frank Kilgore died at 72 in
mid-July. He will be missed.
May he be remembered with
gratitude for his generous gifts
and true grit. -JV
started out at Market at the Mill, realized they had
something going, and moved into a full-fledged storefront
on Main Street, " says Lisa Turnick of the Pickens
Chamber of Commerce.
Pickens historian Wayne Kelley has a good take on
his town's flea market identity. " The flea markets? It's
economic and social, too. We're trendsetting-people
all over the country are buying used now, right? " he
says with a smile.
Kelley is a Pickens County native who left home
for southern California to work in the record and film
industries and returned after he retired. " My ancestors
came here after the Cherokee Territory opened
up for white settlement in 1782 or so...I'm related
to hundreds of people here. It's colorful to figure out
how we are all interconnected. "
Kelley believes that maintaining the identity of
Pickens will draw people, pointing to the HagoodMauldin
House as a prime example of its story. Undergoing
historic restoration and filled with antique
furnishings, the house was donated to the Pickens
Historical Society by its last owner, collector Irma
Morris. Tours are given the third Saturday of the
month, April through October.
Down the street and around the corner, the Pickens
County Museum of Art and History is in the
restored 1902 jail building. Home to two annual art
shows and filled with well-displayed historical items,
it's a fascinating place to wander.
As is the Hagood Mill Historic Site and Folklife
Hagood-Mauldin House); and beautiful (Table Rock
State Park and the Blue Ridge Escarpment).
I may have missed the Azalea Festival, but being in
Pickens on Wednesdays is an astonishment. The Bargain
Exchange and the Pickens County Flea Markets
sit side by side on Walhalla Highway, booths spreading
across acres of fields and under pavilions. Hundreds
of cars. Hundreds of vendors. Thousands of
customers. It seems safe to say that anything you can
imagine is for sale at one of the booths. Both markets
are open only on Wednesdays; both open at dawn and
close early in the afternoon. The scope and spectacle
are worth stopping for...and if you're lucky, there will
be a bluegrass jam session happening in the shade.
Across town is a third boundless yard sale, The
Market at the Mill. Housed in a former cottonseed oil
CLOCKWISE
FROM TOP LEFT:
The gristmill at
Hagood Mill is still
in operation after
180 years.
Table Rock
Mountain rises
high above Table
Rock Lake.
The Doodle Rail
Trail connects
Pickens and
Easley.
The mural is part
of Cheyenne
Marcus' " Fifty in
Fifty " project.
Center a little ways outside of town, where walking
trails wind through reconstructed log cabins and past
a blacksmith shop, a moonshine still and a still-operating
1845 water-powered gristmill that produces
milled flour, cornmeal and grits sold onsite. There's
also a building filled with Native American petroglyphs.
Nothing here feels engineered or staged. It's a
lovely place where Upcountry South Carolina history
shows itself quietly and beautifully.
This is, it seems, what Pickens does best. With the
support of its strong historical society, the jail-turnedhistory-and-art
museum, a winding walk/bike trail
connecting two cooperating towns, the biggest flea
markets I've ever seen and new businesses up and
down Main Street, Pickens seems well on the way to
doing what City Administrator O'Briant hopes for:
" We want to tell the story again. "
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2024 17
STOCK ADOBE | SEANPAVONEPHOTO
Blue Ridge Country Sept/Oct 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country Sept/Oct 2024
