Hiking Trails

You’re about to Explore a Historic Railroad TrailWelcome! 

Please hike and bike safely. It is recommended to wear bright colors or an orange vest during hunting season. Please respect the trail, nature along the
trail, and adjoining private property. Enjoy your time here. Tell your friends about SVRRT and the Little River Blueway Adventure Area. Come back to see us soon!

The Savannah Valley RailRoad Trail (SVRRT) is a hiking
and biking trail opened in 2011, but the route has history
dating back to the mid-1800s.
The Savannah Valley RailRoad was first chartered in 1856 with
plans to run from Anderson in the north to Edgefield, but it did
not happen. Twenty years later, the Charleston & Western
Carolina laid 58 miles of track over the same basic route —
Anderson, Iva, Lowndesville, McCormick — in the 1870s.
A merger of four local railroads, including the Savannah Valley
RailRoad, in 1886 resulted in a Port Royal & Western Carolina
Company with 12 locomotives and eight passenger cars. By
1896, the name reverted back to Charleston & Western
Carolina, and the company had 400 miles of track.
This trail (or railroad right-of-way) went from McCormick to
Bordeaux, Willington, Mt. Carmel, Hester, Calhoun Falls,
Latimer, Loundesville, Barnes, Iva, Starr, Deans and into
Anderson. While the railroad thrived in the early 20th century,
by 1952, passenger service was limited, and by 1955 service
was freight only. Trains stopped running in the 1970s, and the
State of South Carolina acquired the right-of-way.
In 2006, the Ninety Six District Resource Conservation and
Development Council and McCormick County residents
thought that the SVRRT would make an excellent
rails-to-trails project. They organized a steering committee
to develop the trail. The committee wove its way through a
maze of regulations, processes, and procedures and
gathered support from numerous local, county, and state
organizations. Volunteer labor began clearing the trail in
2008. The trail is now governed by Savannah Valley Trails, Inc.
SVRRT goes from this trailhead to the site of the Badwell
Plantation House (1.8 miles up the trail), the Petigru Family


Spring House (1.9 miles of trail and 0.1 mile off the trail), and
the Badwell Cemetery (the Petigru Family Cemetery, 1.9
miles up the trail and 0.5 miles off the trail). James Louis
Petigru (May 10, 1789 — March 9, 1863) was a South
Carolina lawyer, politician and jurist. After South Carolina
seceded from the Union in 1860, Petigru remarked his
famous, “South Carolina is too small for a republic and too
large for an insane asylum.” Beyond the Petigru compound,
the trail extends to the Huguenot Worship Monument, up to a
trestle over Mill Creek, and continues to Willington.

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