The S.C. Railroad

Front: The tracks of the S.C. Railroad, operated by the S.C. Canal & Railroad Company, ran here from 1833 to the 1850s. The company, chartered in 1827, began constructing a 136-mile long line from Charleston to Hamburg (near North Augusta) in 1830. Completed in 1833, the railroad was the longest in America at the time and the first to carry the United States mails. Aiken, chartered in 1835, was named for William Aiken (1779-1831), the railroad’s first president. Reverse: The original tracks through Aiken, one of the first “railroad towns” in the United States, ran along this street, then known as Railroad Avenue. Railroad Avenue was renamed Park Avenue in the 1850s after the tracks were moved one block south into the “Railroad Cut.” Though the S.C. Railroad flourished before the Civil War, it struggled during Reconstruction and afterwards. It was eventually absorbed into the Southern Railway in 1902.