Landrum, South Carolina

Landrum, in the far northwestern corner of South Carolina, was founded in eighteen eighty when the Spartanburg and Asheville Railroad reached the foothills. The town is named for John Gill Landrum, a Baptist minister and local historian who gave the land for the local depot. With the railroad came a small commercial strip and a depot that tied the mountain foothills to markets in Spartanburg and beyond.

Landrum sits on the southern slope of the Blue Ridge, at the point where the Piedmont begins to buckle upward, and the surrounding countryside became known for horse farms in the twentieth century. Today the city of roughly twenty-five hundred is perhaps best known in the equestrian world as the gateway to Tryon, a few miles east, where the two thousand eighteen FEI World Equestrian Games were held. Landrum's small downtown has held on, anchored by antique shops and the community center.