Driving The Ghost Road

The wife and I have just returned from another visit to Charleston, South Carolina. It has become our destination of choice for a quick get-away. She loves most any place with a beach, and I enjoy being around the ocean. The mix of sea, sand and history really appeal to us. The four-plus hour drive, however, might cast doubt on the “quick” part of the get-away.

Every trip, though, the drive has been monotonous. A good part of the drive is interstate, and travel by interstate is fine if time is your only consideration. But if you want to the actually get a feel for the places you pass through, you must leave the super-slab. As the late Charles Kuralt once remarked, "Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything."

We decided to take a more meandering route back home, and see what small town, rural South Carolina held for those who were adventurous enough to visit. If you allow yourself to become immersed in the communities you pass through, if you read the signs, actually notice the homes… the actual drive can be so much more interesting.

We were prepared as we left Charleston to see the mundane and ordinary. Every place has those. We also were ready for the odd and unique. Most places have something to fit those categories. However, we were hoping to be surprised. We hoped to discover a thing, a place, a fact that made the whole side trip magically worthwhile.

One thing my wife and I do when we travel is read signs. Whether they be billboards, signs for churches and community events, road signs, they are all pieces to a larger puzzle. These are the things that provide depth and context to a community as you pass through. (In Walterboro, South Carolina last year, a sign at a convenience store advertised a free YooHoo chocolate drink with the purchase of two packs of Skoal chewing tobacco. I’d love to know if anyone took them up on that offer. Eewww…)

We shared a moment of time with communities named Givhans, Springtown and Ulmer. In one county, nearly every rural road was a lane - Happiness Lane, Huckleberry Hill Lane, Heaven’s Path Lane. Our favorite was Pumpkin Girl Lane. We stopped for a Coke at a gas station that looked pretty sketchy from the road, and wasn’t a lot better inside. But the woman behind the cash register smiled and wished us a “blessed day”. On a lonely stretch of rural South Carolina highway, we were passed by an SUV doing at least 80. They were around us and out of sight in 20 or 30 seconds. We had enough time to see their University of Tennessee tag on the front as they approached, and their Cherokee County, GA tag on the back as they sped off.

We left the two-lane road behind in the town of Bamburg, turning onto the four-lane US 301 for the drive back into Georgia and on to Statesboro. The adventure seemed over. For a couple of minutes.

We noticed an abandoned old motel on the highway. Sad, I thought. No business for it here. There was almost no traffic on the road, prompting the wife to wonder aloud why it was four-laned to begin with. Later, we did notice that the road itself looked pretty old. Must have been for lanes for a long time. Further south, where US 301 and 321 meet, then split, there were more abandoned businesses. In Allendale even more. Restaurants, truck stops, motels.

It finally sunk in… this had been one busy stretch of highway at some point in time. But now it was a shadow of its former self. Wifey called it a “ghost road”. And that’s what it is.

From Bamburg south to Statesboro, we saw one old business after another, closed up and left behind. Rusting, dilapidated ghosts of an era before the interstates, when travelers from the Northeast passed through on their way to Florida. When I-95 was opened through South Carolina and Georgia in the 1970s, the days were numbered for these motels and diners.

A little research after we got home confirmed our suspicions. Running from Delaware to Florida, US 301 had been one of the two main routes (along with US 1) from the Northeast to the Sunshine State. These communities we had driven through, and countless others along the route, had welcomed tourists, truckers and others on the long hauls north and south. Now, they were forgotten. Some, like Allendale, looked to have never recovered.

We took the back roads in hopes of finding something unique, unexpected. We hoped to discover something special, and we did. This one, though, is rooted is sadness and abandonment. These old motels and diners, many with broken walls and fallen signs, sit along the roadside as if waiting for the right time to awaken and come back to life. Certainly would be nice if some of them could.

To see pictures of some of these places, and to read more, check out these links…

Memory takes the back road

Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge in Allendale

Mr. Gleck's Five Flavors Blog: Route 301

Old Paradise Restaurant and Motel - Screven County (also from Mr. Gleck)