Centenary: The History of a South Carolina Railroad Town

In 1912, the North and South Carolina Railroad line laid 68 miles of tracks through the cotton fields of the Pee Dee. One of the new depots would be located 10 miles below the city of Marion, S.C., in a rural area known as Centenary. The train, named the Boll Weevil, would soon provide local farmers with access to broader markets and country folks with opportunities to travel to faraway places. Entrepreneurs would build businesses and houses around the depot with hopes of creating a boomtown. The history they would leave behind would be about bootlegging and churchgoing, picnics and goat suppers, influential politicians and hapless servants, the making of the 1934 movie Carolina, and a famous murder that was never solved. In the center of it all was the railroad track, the lifeline of the village. Centenary is not unique in its history, but the facts along with the stories are interwoven into a soulful vision of the old south struggling toward a new reality. Come aboard the Boll Weevil for a trip back in time to the early years of the 20th century when people, whose lives were steeped in tradition, found themselves thrust into a bold new world-that all were not destined to survive.