By Russell Stall
Editor’s note: This is part of a continuing series of columns, stories and photos by Greenville County Historical Society examining the history of Greenville and the Upstate.
In 1917, Greenville was booming. Textile mills had brought jobs, investment and thousands of residents, making the city the business center of the Southern textile industry. But nearly all that prosperity depended on one industry. Mill wages supported Main Street merchants. Banks financed manufacturers. County farmers planted crops that fed the mills.
Then Washington came to town. Capt. William G. Sirrine, president of the Chamber of Commerce, and Col. Oscar Mauldin had served with Gen. Leonard Wood, who was sent to site the Army’s new training camps. They optioned a thousand acres and invited him down. He announced his decision at City Park in May 1917. Camp Sevier covered about 2,000 acres near Paris Mountain. J. E. Sirrine engineered it; Gallivan and Fiske-Carter built it. The 30th “Old Hickory” Division trained there, and an estimated 100,000 men passed through before the camp closed in 1919.
They brought a new economy. The Piedmont and Northern ran trains to the camp every 15 minutes, while soldiers spent their pay in restaurants, hotels, theaters and boarding houses. Greenville grew from about 15,700 people in 1910 to 23,700 in 1920. Eugenia Duke supplied downtown canteens with sandwiches made with her mayonnaise, and Balentine Packing opened to supply meat. Camp Sevier strengthened the local economy.
It also brought hardship. The winter of 1917-18 was the coldest since 1898, and men lived in tents without barracks or heat. Influenza swept the camp and companies were quarantined. Frances Withington watched funeral processions pass her West Washington Street home toward the Southern depot, where caskets were “stacked like cord wood.”
The camp did not change what the economy rested on. Wartime demand for cloth made the mills more profitable, and Greenville emerged more tied to textiles than before. When the soldiers left, federal spending left with them. The county’s first paved road and an Army hospital that operated until 1925 were most of what remained.
The contrast came during World War II, when the government built Greenville Army Air Base, later Donaldson Air Force Base. Donaldson operated for two decades and left roads, utilities, hangars and a runway. When the Air Force left in 1963, local leaders took title, and the base became South Carolina Technology and Aviation Center (SCTAC), an industrial center. Greenville found a new use for what Washington built.
Both camps brought opportunity. The difference was what remained when the money stopped.
Next: Segregated Greenville denied Black residents libraries, recreation and social services, so Hattie Logan Duckett built them herself.
Russell Stall is a Greenville native, former at-large Greenville City Council member, and certified city planner. He serves as executive director of the Greenville County Historical Society. For more information, visit greenvillehistory.org.
