Little Mountain, South Carolina

Little Mountain, in Newberry County, is a small South Carolina town named for a low rounded granite outcrop nearby, one of many such monadnocks that dot the Midlands. German and Swiss immigrants settled the surrounding area in the mid-eighteen hundreds, attracted by cheap land and religious freedom, and their descendants still hold many of the old family farms. The town became a modest rail stop in the late nineteenth century and incorporated in eighteen ninety-two.

Its most durable tradition is the Little Mountain Reunion, a homecoming festival often called one of South Carolina's oldest, tracing its roots to the eighteen eighties when scattered farm families gathered annually to share food and catch up on the year's news. The festival still draws thousands each August. The town itself has a population of only a few hundred, but as a Newberry County landmark it holds an outsized place in the county's civic identity.