Home Care In Eastover, SC

EASTOVER — Change is a big word in Eastover.

Abandoned and aging buildings boarded up and overgrown with vines overlook a railroad track that intersects the town's main thoroughfare. Some of these buildings once housed a bank, meat market, post office and restaurants.

After World War II, the small town of a little over 600 in lower Richland County started bleeding its rural population as surrounding Columbia and Sumter grew. Other than that, the area — mostly farms, families and churches — hasn’t changed much.

“At times, it seems the train is Eastover’s only outside visitor," a reporter for The State wrote in a 1994 newspaper article about the town.

The Richland County library branch in Eastover shows some signs of life, though the inside is empty.

"Ain't nothing going on," Kiriakis Kirk, who has lived in the town his entire life, said last week while standing outside the library.

Kirk, 34, commutes to Northeast Columbia for work. "You got nothing around for the kids, for the youth. Nothing but trouble," he said.

The same can be said for the predominantly Black Lower Richland community as a whole, which hasn't seen much of an impact from the state's business boom and population growth in recent years.

But unlike other dying rural communities in South Carolina, Lower Richland is home to a gem: Congaree National Park, the state's only national park, which attracts over 200,000 people to the area every year.

Lower Richland has largely missed out on the benefits of the park, as tourists have little incentive to spend extra dollars in the area, often opting to bypass communities like Eastover, Hopkins and Gadsden in favor of Columbia.

With room for housing development depleting around Columbia and the rural northeast corner of the county, it’s possible developers will look to Lower Richland for future projects. The county is banking on a tourism plan to bring more park visitors to the area, with hopes that it will help bring more rooftops and retail to follow.

“Starting from the ground up”

By the mid-18th century, settlers had begun planting crops like indigo, rice and tobacco on the "rich land" of the Midlands, which would evolve into vast farms reliant on slave labor.

By the end of the century, farmers in Lower Richland were growing cotton on large plantations, requiring even more slaves, and creating immense wealth for plantation owners. Slaves made up 75 percent of the population of Lower Richland by 1860.

The swampy forest that would become Congaree National Park in 2003 was used as a hiding place for runaway slaves, escaped convicts and moonshine stills. During the Revolutionary War, Gen. Francis Marion fled deep into the swamp to elude British troops.

After World War II, railroads were replaced by the interstate highway system and the population of Lower Richland slowly declined as families moved from the rural towns to urban centers like Columbia and Atlanta, looking for job opportunities.

“When I grew up, I grew up with big farms,” said James Faber, Eastover's newly elected mayor. “You don't have those farms anymore.”

Though the town has a Dollar General and a handful of remaining restaurants, many residents have to drive 13 miles to the Food Lion across from Lower Richland High School for fresh groceries.

Every time town leadership engages a grocery chain, they get the same answer: not enough rooftops, according to Faber, whose goal it is to spur some development and get a laundromat, drug store and health care for residents.

Nearby military bases, including Fort Jackson, McCrady Army National Guard and McEntire Air National Guard, have helped bring some life to the area. But jobs are still scant, pushing many residents — especially the youth — away.

When International Paper opened a paper plant in Eastover in 1999, most town residents could only work on the first phase of the plant’s opening, digging the foundation and doing other construction work. Faber said he would have liked to have seen some job training opportunities for residents.

“They were left out,” Faber said. “And they wonder why Eastover has not developed.”

“You have to blame us too,” he continued, “because nobody wants to live where you don’t have amenities. You got to have some things that people want to stay right? We’re almost starting from the ground up.”

Most of the workforce and the paper plant and Kemira come from Sumter.

If the town had the resources and funding, tourists wouldn’t have to travel to Columbia or Sumter for overnight stays and amenities, Faber said.

“Hopefully we could get a bed and breakfast here someday,” he said.

The 'stepchild of Richland County'

Mr. Bunky’s one-stop shop is out of the way for Congaree Park visitors, but the two-story building on Garners Ferry Road attracts tourists from all over the world.

The store, which serves as a restaurant, meat market, hardware, consignment and gas station, is a local landmark in Eastover. Much of their business comes from the nearby military bases and loyal customers who come every day for breakfast or lunch.

The longtime owner and builder, Bunky Carter, died unexpectedly in September at 84, leaving the store to his daughter, Jill Lewis, 45, and his son, Jason Carter, 48, who also takes care of the family’s farm a few miles down the road.

Lewis has put her career as a nurse practitioner on hold, something she said she anticipated would happen at some point.

A quarter of a million people visited Congaree National Park in 2023, a few miles south of Eastover and 20 miles from Columbia. The park has been breaking its attendance records for several years. But those tourists rarely stop in Lower Richland to spend money, opting to spend the night and their dollars in Columbia.

The biggest barriers to growth in Lower Richland have been crumbling roads and a lack of water and sewer lines, with much of the area relying on private wells and septic tanks until just a few years ago when connections were extended further south.

In The State's 1994 article on Eastover, the vice president of First Citizen Bank decried the county’s lack of funding for the area, describing the town as the “step child of Richland County.”

Pointing to sewer, water connections and road improvements, the area’s county representative, Cheryl English, said that’s no longer the case.

As developers run out of land for housing projects around Columbia and in the rural northern half of the county, they will start looking South, according to the county’s director of economic development Jeff Ruble.

“It's really getting really difficult to keep building neighborhoods up in the northeast area … and Irmo is kind of the same way, you know, the city of Columbia is relatively dense,” Ruble said. “I think Lower Richland is generally a pretty attractive direction of growth for developers."

Infrastructure improvements and other developments

Much of the development that has taken place in the area hasn't been well received by residents, according to newly elected state Rep. Robert Reese, who grew up in Eastover. Much of that growth has been focused around Garners Ferry Road in South Columbia that has reached into Lower Richland.

Reese said the biggest challenge is balancing the need for growth with residents' desire to maintain the rural, laid-back character of the area.

"There's a simple quietness (in Eastover)," Reese said. "How do you have growth but maintain that lifestyle?"

But, English said, if residents want to see some amenities, they will have to be amenable to some change. "The rural feel is great, but the rural feel as it is doesn't bring any development," English said. "If you're asking me, 'we want restaurants down here, we want hospitals down here,' you're not going to get that with what we have there now."

Richland County's tourism plan, passed by council in 2022, aims to attract more visitors to the area and have more of those dollars support economic development in Lower Richland. The plan hinges on highlighting the area’s rich history, setting up a small business incubator and developing recreational areas outside of the park.

Visitors to the park contributed $14.9 million in spending in the area in 2023 and supported 173 jobs, according to an annual report from the National Park Service.

“Lower Richland contains no lodging options and few retail, restaurant, and dry goods options for residents or visitors,” the plan says. “This situation offers immediate openings for recreational and tourism options that can complement the national park’s offerings.”

One of the most important developments in the plan is developing a nearby 2,500-acre tract of land owned by the county known as Mill Creek. The idea is to develop the area into a network of trails, cabins, RV parks and access to the Congaree River. Ideally, it would become a hub for visitors who want to spend the night closer to the park rather than commuting to Columbia.

The county is in the process of improving the basic infrastructure like the road network around Mills Creek and developing a management plan for the development. They just finished replacing the main bridge that leads to the Mill Creek property, which was wiped out by a flood in February 2020, according to John Grego, chair of the Richland County Conservation Commission.

The county is also close to finalizing a contract with the University of South Carolina’s small business development center to provide consulting and small business training with an emphasis on promoting tourism in Lower Richland.

“The small business development initiatives were parts of the plan that were of the greatest interest to residents of Lower Richland,” Grego said.

The county is working with a consultant to implement a Heritage Tourism Marketing plan to highlight 15 African American History tourism sites. English mentioned the Midland's moving toward highlighting the three rivers as a major tourism attraction. She said she wants to see that vision extend all the way down to Lower Richland.

"That same river runs all the way down to (Highway) 601," English said. "Imagine tourism from there all the way down to 601 — this clean, beautiful, untapped landscape. That's my vision."