Oconee County is the westernmost county in the U.S. state of South Carolina. As of the 2020 census, the population was 78,607. Its county seat is Walhalla and its largest community is Seneca. Oconee County is included in the Seneca, SC Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is also included in the Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson, SC Combined Statistical Area. South Carolina Highway 11, the Cherokee Foothills National Scenic Highway, begins in southern Oconee County at Interstate Highway 85 at the Georgia state line.
Walhalla is a city in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Oconee County, South Carolina, United States. Designated in 1868 as the county seat, it lies within the area of the Blue Ridge Escarpment, an area of transition between mountains and piedmont, and contains numerous waterfalls. It is located 16 miles (26 km) from Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina.
A chain gang or road gang is a group of prisoners chained together to perform menial or physically challenging work as a form of punishment. Such punishment might include repairing buildings, building roads, or clearing land. The system was notably used in the convict era of Australia and in the Southern United States. By 1955 it had largely been phased out in the U.S., with Georgia among the last states to abandon the practice. Clallam County, Washington, U.S. still refers to its inmate litter crew as the "Chain Gang." North Carolina continued to use chain gangs into the 1970s. Chain gangs were reintroduced by a few states during the 1990s: In 1995, Alabama was the first state to revive them. The experiment ended after about one year in all states except Arizona, where in Maricopa County inmates can still volunteer for a chain gang to earn credit toward a high school diploma or avoid disciplinary lockdowns for rule infractions.
A prison farm is a large correctional facility where penal labor convicts work — legally or illegally — on a farm, usually for manual labor, largely in the open air, such as in agriculture, logging, quarrying, and mining. In the United States, such forced labor is made legal by the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution; however, some other parts of the world have made penal labor illegal. The concepts of prison farm and labor camp overlap, with the idea that the prisoners are forced to work. The historical equivalent on a very large scale was called a penal colony.
Oconee State Park is a state park located in the Blue Ridge Mountain region of South Carolina. This 1165-acre (472 ha) park has several recreational opportunities to choose from. They include cabins, camping, fishing and boating in the two small lakes located on the park grounds, hiking on eight nature/hiking trails, and several picnic and meeting facilities.
Stumphouse Mountain Tunnel in Oconee County, South Carolina is an incomplete railroad tunnel for the Blue Ridge Railroad of South Carolina in Sumter National Forest. The tunnel, along with nearby Issaqueena Falls, are now a Walhalla city park.
The West Virginia Penitentiary, located in Moundsville, West Virginia is now a withdrawn and retired gothic-style prison that operated from 1866 to 1995. The site is now being maintained as a tourist attraction, museum, training facility, and filming location.
Oconee Station was established in 1792 as a blockhouse on the South Carolina frontier. Troops were removed in 1799. The site also encompasses the Williams Richards House, which was built in the early 19th century as a residence and trading post. The site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 as Oconee Station and Richards House.
The Walhalla Graded School, built in 1901, is an historic building located at 101 E. North Broad Street in Walhalla, South Carolina. It was designed by noted Columbia architect William Augustus Edwards of the firm of Edwards and Walter and built by Grandy & Jordan of Greenville.
This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Oconee County, South Carolina.
The old Oconee County Jail was a former jail located on Short Street in Walhalla, South Carolina, in Oconee County. The jail was located on the grounds of the current Oconee County Courthouse. It was named to the National Register of Historic Places on November 14, 1982, along with the Oconee County Cage. At the time of its listing, the jail was one of the few remaining nineteenth or twentieth century jails in upper northwestern South Carolina. It was demolished around 1985. Subsequently, it was delisted on December 12, 1989.
The Long Creek Academy is a former Christian school that is located at the intersection of Academy Road and South Carolina S-37-339 near U.S. Route 76 near Long Creek, South Carolina in Oconee County. It was named to the National Register of Historic Places on November 20, 1987. It is currently used by a whitewater rafting company.
St. John's Lutheran Church, also known as St. John's German Evangelical Church of Walhalla, is a historic church at 301 W. Main Street in Walhalla, South Carolina. There is a preschool run by the church.
The Pottawattamie County Jail, also known as 'Squirrel Cage Jail' in Council Bluffs, Iowa, United States was built in 1885 and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. The building is one of three extant “squirrel cage jails,” also known as rotary jails. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2023.
Imprisonment began to replace other forms of criminal punishment in the United States just before the American Revolution, though penal incarceration efforts had been ongoing in England since as early as the 1500s, and prisons in the form of dungeons and various detention facilities had existed as early as the first sovereign states. In colonial times, courts and magistrates would impose punishments including fines, forced labor, public restraint, flogging, maiming, and death, with sheriffs detaining some defendants awaiting trial. The use of confinement as a punishment in itself was originally seen as a more humane alternative to capital and corporal punishment, especially among Quakers in Pennsylvania. Prison building efforts in the United States came in three major waves. The first began during the Jacksonian Era and led to the widespread use of imprisonment and rehabilitative labor as the primary penalty for most crimes in nearly all states by the time of the American Civil War. The second began after the Civil War and gained momentum during the Progressive Era, bringing a number of new mechanisms—such as parole, probation, and indeterminate sentencing—into the mainstream of American penal practice. Finally, since the early 1970s, the United States has engaged in a historically unprecedented expansion of its imprisonment systems at both the federal and state level. Since 1973, the number of incarcerated persons in the United States has increased five-fold. Now, about 2,200,000 people, or 3.2 percent of the adult population, are imprisoned in the United States, and about 7,000,000 are under supervision of some form in the correctional system, including parole and probation. Periods of prison construction and reform produced major changes in the structure of prison systems and their missions, the responsibilities of federal and state agencies for administering and supervising them, as well as the legal and political status of prisoners themselves.
Russell House was a historic inn located near Mountain Rest, Oconee County, South Carolina. It was built about 1867, and considerably expanded around 1890, and served as an inn for travelers between Walhalla and the mountain resort area. The Russell House, two storage buildings, and a privy were destroyed by fire in 1988. Located on the property are the contributing ruins of a log barn, a spring house, outhouse, garage, corn crib, and potato cellar.
The South Carolina Penitentiary (SCP) (renamed the Central Correctional Institution (CCI) in 1965) was the state of South Carolina's first prison. Completed in 1867, the South Carolina Penitentiary served as the primary state prison for nearly 130 years until its demolition in 1999. It was located adjacent to the Congaree River in Columbia, South Carolina and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 4, 1996. It was replaced by the Lee Correctional Institution as the main prison in the state of South Carolina after the prison was deemed too overcrowded by a federal court.
The Oconee County Courthouse is a historic government building at 211 West Main Street in Walhalla, South Carolina. Built in 1956, it served as a county courthouse until 2003, when the present courthouse was opened next door. It was designed by the regional firm Lyles, Bissett, Carlisle & Wolff, known for its high quality Mid-Century Modern designs. This building is a fine local example of Starved Classicism, a style not found in other courthouses in South Carolina's hill counties.
