Cayce, South Carolina

Cayce sits on the west bank of the Congaree River, and the ground beneath it has been occupied for at least twelve thousand years. When European traders first arrived in the early seventeen hundreds, Congaree people were living here. By the seventeen sixties, a colonial trading town called Granby had grown up nearby and was one of the first important trading posts in the interior of the colony.

But Granby flooded repeatedly, disease spread, and when Columbia rose across the river it drew away the commerce. Granby was essentially abandoned by the eighteen twenties. The place revived slowly, and when it incorporated in nineteen fourteen, locals named it for a family that had run a general store at the local road crossing for a century.

Uncle Billy Cayce had long since given the spot its nickname, and the name stuck.