Making the Grade
By Monica JonesPhotographs by Rimas Zailskas
The Columbia Heights neighborhood is nestled on the hill above downtown Saluda, and if it weren’t for the occasional passing automobile it would be easy to believe you’d been transported back to another time. The lanes in
Columbia Heights are narrow, winding, and sometimes steep. Homes are tucked under canopies of broad oaks and towering pines. Mountain laurel and rhododendron abound. W.G. Hinson developed the neighborhood in the 1880s, taking advantage of the emerging economic upswing as the first passenger trains chugged up the famous Saluda Grade. The sign standing by the tracks running through Main Street boasts that the line was opened in 1878, is three miles long, and crests right there in the middle of town.
The coming of the “Carolina Special” steam trains, connecting Charleston and Asheville, only made it easier for visitors to reach the mountains to continue the long-standing tradition of escaping the heat and humidity of the lowlands. The trains brought many visitors to this quiet little town — more than doubling the population in the summer months.
By the time the trains arrived, developers were logging and buying substantial tracts of land. Visitors were encouraged to build their own summer homes, as well as spending time in local inns and boarding houses. Hinson marketed his Columbia Heights lots to visitors from Columbia, which was now a convenient four-hour train ride away.
According to a 1936 magazine article, the first homes on the Heights had barbed wire fences to keep out cattle and hogs that roamed the mountains. Land sold for $140 an acre back in 1895, and houses cost $450 completed, including the cost of the lumber. Ox-cart trails wound through the properties, eventually becoming roads called Laurel Drive and Chisholm Street.
The influx of visitors was an economic boon to the local population. Many listed their homes as “boarding houses” and rented out unused rooms to summer visitors to supplement the family income. Mountain dwellers drove their wagons to collect laundry and returned it washed and pressed. Youngsters collected and strung chinquapins to sell to train travelers.
The depression curbed the area’s rapid growth as one of the finest summer resorts in the South. Over the years, many boarding houses and homes burned, or fell into disrepair, and the advent of air-conditioning also had an impact on the number of summer visitors.
There are still many of the original grand homes, however, scattered along Columbia Avenue and Chisholm Street, and tucked down trails and winding lanes. And the economic revival in the last 30 years has stimulated the restoration of many homes — and their gardens — to their original grandeur.
Although the trains no longer run, the legacy lingers on. The area’s reputation for cool, healthy, mountain air still draws summer visitors, and the neighborhood’s year-round population enjoys serenity, tranquility, and privacy in this special part of the world.
© 2007 Planet Zeus Media, LLC
