When the Glendale - Cifton Road was First
Paved
Story
furnished
by Clarence
Crocker
The Spartanburg County
Commission under the leadership of Mr. E. C. Burnett, Chairman,
announced through the Spartanburg
Herald on August 11, 1932 that steps
preparatory to surfacing the Glendale/Clifton road had been taken and
that the project would proceed as planned.
Surfacing of the 5.4
mile dirt road from Glendale to it’s intersection with highway #8 (old
Converse/Cowpens road?) via Clifton # 1 was expected to cost
approximately $12,000. Money for the project was to be advanced by the
County board and would be repaid by the proceeds of the gasoline tax.
Bids for furnishing the crushed stone were to be sought at once, with
work expected to begin very soon.
This writer remembers the
project well. The road ran directly in front of our home, dividing some
of our farm land. Being a county road, the construction crew was
primarily county prisoners. Chain-gang camps where the prisoners stayed
were strategically located throughout the county. One was located about
a mile above our house on the Glendale/Fernwood road at the
intersection with the Sloan Grove road. Another was located on
Chain-Gang Hill road just above Clifton #2 mill.
Example of a chain gang but not in
Glendale.
Before
they
could
surface the road it had to be prepared with top soil. Using teams of
horses and mules with drag pans, wheel barrows, picks, shovels and
rakes they took top soil from our land as they did from most all farms
along the road in order to smooth the roadbed for surfacing. Most days,
traffic was maintained on the road while the top soil work was being
done. One day, following a day of rain, a Pepsi truck came along and
got stuck in the soft clay. The prisoners got around the truck, lifting
and pushing and were able to get the truck on the road again. Most
every prisoner snatched him a drink or two as the truck pulled away.
The guard seeing what happened, hollowed, stopping the driver but when
told what had happened, the driver thanked them and asked if they all
got one, if not “come get one” he said.
After the soil had been
placed on the road bed, crude road graders (modern at that time)
smoothed and packed the roadbed. On the day of surfacing traffic was
detoured and trucks would spread the gravel, which was smoothed by road
graders, with prisoners using shovels and rakes continuing to smooth
the gravel where needed.
After the road had been
smoothed, a truck spread boiling hot tar over the gravel covered
roadbed. A spur line had been built off the electric
trolley
carline just above our house in front of the old Sloan place on
which a
tank of
tar was sidetracked for use on the highway. The tank was kept hot 24/7
until the tank was empty. A truck spreading a fine gravel put a
finishing surface on the road.
Everyone up our way was glad
to see the road paved. With very few cars in the neighborhood, not only
did the mill workers walk down a muddy road in the rain to work on
rainy days unless they rode the trolley, but all of us kids walked
about two miles a day to school and back. There were no school buses
for elementary school children at that time. Fact of the matter, all
village streets were dirt, covered with cinders taken from the mill
boilers. Folk, believe this voice of experience when I say one doesn’t
know what the pain of a skinned knee really feels like until they have
fallen on a cinder covered road.
Today, the Glendale/Clifton
road is a State highway and is maintained by the State Highway
department. Since 1932, it has been slightly modified and resurfaced
many times. The last time the road was modified was due to the
construction of the new Glendale Bridge. (Story of the new bridge to be
printed soon) The curve which carried the roadway into the village flat
and behind the Mill Store onto the bridge was bypassed with a straight
road from the bottom of Highland Street across the bridge into the
Glendale/Whitestone road.
Incidentally, in 1932, the
Glendale/Clifton road which had been built to replace the old Georgia
road, ran parallel with the Old Georgia Roadbed in front of our
house.
Opened in 1805 as the “Federal Road Route” which was later to be known
as “The Old Georgia Road” started in Savannah, Georgia running through
the Cherokee Indian Nation into and through South Carolina into
Tennessee. It was considered a major transport route of that
day.
The road had been
discontinued just beyond our house due to a large gully on the Sloan
property that was fast encroaching upon the roadway. The gully had been
caused largely by the runoff of the roadway waters which were diverted
when the new road was built. The old Georgia road bed was then and is
today part of the drive way in front of four of the Crocker family
homes. The gully has been filled in with highway and sidewalk debris
generated from new road and sidewalk construction in and around
Spartanburg.
