Home Care In Pendleton, SC

PENDLETON — She baked her first real, homemade cake in college using a roommate’s family recipe to get the girls through exam week.

The three-layer cake topped with chocolate candy was just about the only thing the roommate would eat, and the act of kindness ended up becoming a side job.

Now with a daughter who is a student Clemson University, Kimberly Blackwell is opening Pendleton Candy Company at 119 Mechanic St., in Pendleton on the town square. Her storefront is filled to the brim with candy, chocolates, sweets-themed jewelry and — in a nod to her own childhood candy shop memories — purses.

“When I was little, my grandmother took me to a candy store and I got a gumball-shaped purse,” Blackwell recalled. “And I was so excited because my mother would always say, ‘No’ to everything. So I was like, ‘I gotta have purses because somebody will bring their grandkid and get a purse!’ And they’ll have that memory that I have.”

Now on her second candy shop since the building she was renting in Cashiers, N.C., was sold, Blackwell is excited to provide some sweet moments for the community she calls home. Pendleton Candy Company has a variety of truffles, homemade fudges, candy, cotton candy, slushes, pretzels and popcorn in addition to her baked goods.

“If I do lemon bars and a cake one day, I’ll do like a pie and the cheesecake the next day so I’ll always variety,” she said.

With no kitchen in the candy shop, Blackwell works with another downtown vendor to share baking space. It’s just one of many ways the community has embraced Pendleton’s newest store.

A mortgage lender for over 20 years, several clients have made or purchased items to support her new venture in town. There’s a gumball lamp and a large gumball machine that were gifted, not to mention the fully functional vintage cash register.

Someone picking up an online order offered to clean the exterior of the building for free and the mailbox on the front of the shop was handmade and covered in brightly colored lollipops by a friend.

Tiny Pendleton in northwestern South Carolina is one of the largest historic districts in the country. The district covers the whole town.

That might account for the town being included recently on lists from two travel-related publications.

It’s one of 12 places in South Carolina that TravelAwaits considers a Christmas Hallmark town and one of 110 coziest towns in the country according to New York Travel Guides.

Population about 3,500, Pendleton was established in 1790. That’s 100 years before its northern neighbor, Clemson 4 miles away.

Dozens of buildings date back to the founding and into the 1800s, including St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, built in 1822. Clemson founders Thomas Greene Clemson and his wife, Anna Calhoun Clemson, are buried in the cemetery.

Also still standing are Ashtabula, a farmhouse built by Charleston planter Lewis Ladson Gibbes and Woodburn, built by another Charleston resident, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a Revolutionary War veteran and delegate to the Constitutional Convention.

“Today, the Village Green remains the focal point of the town with neat rows of antique shops, boutiques and restaurants drawing residents and visitors to the town center,” wrote Maire McAden, a former staffer with The Miami Herald who now lives in South Carolina. ”It is the site for many of the community’s most popular annual events, including the Pendleton Fall Harvest Festival and the Historic Pendleton Spring Jubilee, a juried arts and crafts festival held the first full weekend of each April.”

At Christmas, the focus is Christkindlmarkt, a European-style Christmas Market on the green under way now on Friday and Saturday nights until Dec. 16.

“Life moves at a slower pace, no one is a stranger, and the town’s history is fascinating,” Travel Awaits said. ”So, the transformation into a Hallmark Christmas movie town for the holidays is, like Pendleton itself, smooth and gentle.”

The green also features a live and lit 40-foot Christmas tree.

The Travel Awaits list in order included Greenville, Pelzer, Aiken, Easley, McCormick, Myrtle Beach, Murrells Inlet, Manning, Abbeville, Pendleton, Rock Hill, and Greenwood.

New York Travel Guides, which looked at 575 small towns and chose 110, offered a description of only the top 20 towns they selected.

Pendleton scored 99.1, second only to Santa Claus, Indiana, for visitor and photographer popularity. They looked at search interest during the months of December, January, and February, and Flickr posts from photographers.

That score was worth 25%.

Pendleton scored low on cozy weather, worth 15%, and cozy activities, 60%. The weather score was 63.9, a tie with four towns in California, Mississippi, Oregon and Texas. The lowest score in this category was Solvang, California at 63.7 followed by Marble Falls, Texas at 63.8..

Granted it doesn’t snow all that much in Pendleton.

On the ever important activities Pendlton scored 69.3, last place. This score was based on Christmas and/or winter festivals, the number of historic performing arts theaters, cozy restaurants, coffee shops and places to stay and the appearance of the town.

Clemson Pendleton Little Theatre is located in Clemson and there is one place to stay in Pendleton proper — a bed and breakfast called Liberty Hall, built in 1849. It’s been a family home, a dairy farm, a boarding house, university housing, an inn and a restaurant through the years.

The top 10 towns on New York Guides’ list are Leavenworth, Washington; Breckenridge, Colorado; Stowe, Vermont; Vail, Colorado; Aspen, Colorado; Lake Placid, New York; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Frankenmuth, Michigan, Petoskey, Michigan and Stillwater, Minnesota.

PENDLETON — When the Pendleton Historic Foundation bought the 190-year-old Jenkins House, they weren’t quite sure what they were going to do with it.

Having put a roof on the home before it was technically in their name, board members only knew that they were committed to saving it. Now, 18 months after purchasing the 9-acre property, the visions are a little clearer: This space is meant for the public.

“We have a 20-member board, and a lot of our discussions in the last couple of years is about how we make ourselves more relevant to the entire community so that we don't just have house museums, but we have living properties that people can utilize,” president Powell Hickman said. “So, we really had desire from the very start to take this 9 acres in the center of Pendleton and make it a property that the whole community can utilize.”

Working with a Clemson University landscape architecture class, ideas now include a conference center and amphitheater in addition to the nature trail and pollinator garden. The foundation wants the Jenkins House — named for the Charleston-trained doctor who built it in 1837 — to be a place for both special events and everyday walks.

There are hopes it could one day be a living history museum since it has, according to PHF treasurer Jackie Reynolds, one of the last carriage houses of its quality and condition in the Upstate. It’s also likely the largest intact family farm within walking distance of a town center, Powell said, which gives it a higher likelihood of visitation compared to the foundation’s other properties in Pendleton.

William Seabrook Jenkins built the house between 1837 and 1839, though the kitchen may have been a cottage built before then that was integrated into the home, Reynolds said. Jenkins likely practiced medicine at his father-in-law’s store in addition to serving clients in his home.

“Really, everybody in Pendleton was seeing Dr. Jenkins,” Powell said after reviewing his call logs at the Medical University of South Carolina. “John C. Calhoun and all the Calhoun family, the Gibbs family that was at Ashtabula, the Pinckney family that was at Woodbridge — they were all patients of Dr. Jenkins. So he really was the doctor that all of these affluent families went to see.”

ANDERSON — Anderson School District 4 voters will have an extra question on their ballot come Election Day: Will they raise their own property taxes to pay for school expansions?

The school board in August approved a bond referendum seeking $115 million to replace Pendleton High School, expand its four elementary schools and relocate Riverside Middle School students to the current PHS campus.

If passed, the bonds will cost residents roughly $64 in additional property taxes for every $100,000 of home value. As the bonds are paid down, the taxes would decrease correspondingly. Signs have popped up in yards encouraging folks to vote yes to the referendum. A number of "vote no" signs have appeared in recent weeks as well.

ASD4's 10-year facility plan, which is estimated to cost nearly $150 million, also calls for reconfiguring elementary grade attendance to K-5 to balance the incoming growth in eastern Anderson County across its schools, Superintendent Dee Christopher said.

“It stands to reason — as we continue to grow — that the more people we have move in, the more businesses, more industry that comes in, the more people that are going to be paying that (bond debt) down,” he said. “So, at least in my mind, individual liability on this initial bond will be less.”

By 2033, the district expects an additional 1,200 students in its hallways. At current capacities, that means three of the four elementary schools will be overloaded. Riverside is expected to hit its capacity in 2025 and Pendleton High in 2026.

"Capacity," as a term, can be a bit misleading, Christopher said. There’s some math involved that can grant a bit of wiggle room to total enrollment, but square footage increase is the goal of the 10-year plan.

“Let’s say with LaFrance (Elementary School), we’ve got three teachers in third grade and we’ve got 60 students in their class, so 20 in each classroom,” Christopher said. “Well, I’ve got to have those three classrooms — regardless of the number of students. So, I can go up maybe 10 more third-grade students, but then I’ve got to add another teacher. When I add another teacher, that total number goes to 80, but I’ve got to have a classroom to be able to do that.”

Pendleton Whisky Velocity Tour again charters action-packed season, including 11 weekends with simultaneous tour stops.

PUEBLO, Colo. – The PBR (Professional Bull Riders) today announced its 2024 competition schedule for the Pendleton Whisky Velocity Tour, set to bring some of bull riding’s preeminent talents to 30 cities across 20 states, headlined by a historic 11 double-up event weekends.

The announcement comes on the spurs of one of the organization’s most dynamic individual seasons in 2023, as the PBR Velocity Tour broke and reset numerous attendance and competition records en-route to its most successful season to date.

In 2023, the expansion Velocity Tour hosted more than 289,000 fans, setting 21 event attendance records, while selling out 17 events.

On the dirt, Josh Frost(Randlett, Utah) was crowned the 2023 PBR Velocity Tour Champion, concluding the season 113.5 points ahead of runner-up Claudio Montanha Jr.(Ribeirao dos Indios, Brazil). The two battled it out until the final outs of the season at the tour’s Finals. Frost was crowned the Velocity Tour Champion just days before being selected by the Carolina Cowboys with the second overall pick in the 2023 PBR Teams Draft.

Throughout the upcoming five-month 2024 season, the Velocity Tour will hold 29 regular-season events, headlined by 11 double-up event weekends, including the tour’s season-launch weekend when it will hold events in Lexington, Kentucky (Jan. 5-6|Rupp Arena), and Portland, Oregon (Jan. 6|Moda Center).

Following the series’ opening weekend, the Velocity Tour will return to the iconic National Western Stock Show in Denver, Colorado, holding one of its two three-day events, and lone mid-week tour stop, Jan. 8-10.

To conclude the intense slate of January events, the Velocity Tour will host three consecutive double-up shows, traveling to Charleston, West Virginia (Jan. 12-13|Charleston Coliseum), and Spokane, Washington (Jan. 13|Spokane Arena), concurrently, followed by simultaneous events in Reno, Nevada (Jan. 19-20|Reno Events Center), and Grand Rapids, Michigan (Jan. 19-20|Van Andel Arena), and synchronized tour stops in Laredo, Texas (Jan 26-27|Sames Auto Arena), and Greenville, South Carolina (Jan. 26-27|Bon Secours Wellness Arena).

Throughout February, the Velocity Tour will bring events to eight cities across as many states, including South Carolina, California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and Massachusetts.

During the campaign, the Velocity Tour’s reach will be on full display as it holds events more than 2,500 miles apart, visiting North Charleston, South Carolina, at North Charleston Coliseum on Feb. 2-3 and Bakersfield, California, at Mechanics Bank Arena on Feb. 3.

To kick off its March campaign, the tour will debut in Bridgeport, Connecticut, at Total Mortgage Arena. Across all levels of PBR competition, the Touring Pro Division has held four events in the city, last travelling to Bridgeport in 2011.

As the month continues, Bangor, Maine, will host the second three-day event of the 2024 season on March 8-10.

The March slate of events will also include a return to Palm Springs, California, at Acrisure Arena on March 15-16. The Velocity Tour debuted in Palm Springs in 2023 to much fanfare, selling out both performances of the two-day event.

In the final month of the season, the Velocity Tour will traverse the Western United States, visiting Fresno, California (April 5-6|Save Mart Center), Eugene, Oregon (April 12-13|Matthew Knight Arena), and Wichita, Kansas (April 20|INTRUST Bank Arena), before Grand Forks, North Dakota and Alerus Center host the regular-season finale on April 27.

For the third consecutive year, the prestigious PBR Pendleton Whisky Velocity Tour Finals will be held in Corpus Christi, Texas, launching the well-known Buc Days celebration. Riders will be vying for the title of 2024 PBR Pendleton Whisky Velocity Tour Champion with five spots also on the line to qualify for the 2024 PBR World Finals.

* 2024 PBR Pendleton Whisky Velocity Tour Finals

For more information about the PBR and the 2024 PBR Pendleton Whisky Velocity Tour schedule, or to purchase tickets, visit PBR.com.

Stay tuned to PBR.com for the latest news and results and be sure to follow the sport on all social media platforms at @PBR.

Photo courtesy of Andre Silva/Bull Stock Media