Ware Shoals (1983: Doomsday)



Ware Shoals is a community to the south of Greenville County of the Piedmont Republic. The community is at the corner of the former counties of Laurens, Greenwood and Abbeville along the Saluda River. It previously resisted incorporation by authorities in the Republic. It was largely an assortment of heavily guarded neighborhoods before joining the Republic in June 1995. It would be another sixteen years, though, before the city (only a few miles outside the nation) would become a part of the newly formed and enlarged Williamston County. Since mid 2011 the town's honed militia has served well at the southern "gateway" to the Piedmont.

History
Ware Shoals is the site of an old water wheel grist mill operated in the early 19th century by William Ware at Rutledge Ford, on the Saluda River. Nat Dial of Laurens County envisioned the possibility of damming this river to power a cotton plant. Dial started the project, but ran out of funds before the power plant was completed. Benjamin D. Riegel bought the project from Dial and founded both the Ware Shoals Manufacturing Company and the town of Ware Shoals in 1902.

The construction of a power plant was completed in 1904, as a prelude to the construction of a state-of-the-art textile mill in 1906. That power plant originally provided for 4,800 horse power. The mill contained 30,000 spindles. By 1916 a new mill was constructed, containing 70,200 spindles and 1,300 looms.

By 1916, the town was as new and modern as any in South Carolina. In addition to the cotton mill and the school, the Ware Shoals Manufacturing Corporation, later known as Riegel Textile Corporation, helped give the town electric lights, water and sewerage and good streets. The mill operated a bank, a railway, an ice factory, a cotton gin and a cotton seed oil mill. A community center was built by the textile company at a cost of $40,000.

In 1926 a large school building was constructed to accommodate students. This building is still used today as the Ware Shoals High School and remains one of the oldest school buildings in the use in the state of South Carolina.

Benjamin Riegel helped organize the town's first church when he brought a Presbyterian preacher, Rev. J. M. Dallas. That first church building was intended as a union church building and the Methodists and Presbyterians used it together, while the Baptists constructed their own facility. "The People's Amusement Hall" is what Benjamin Riegel set out to build, but was so proud of it that he named it the Katherine Hall, in honor of his daughter. Katherine Hall at various times housed or hosted a movie theater, the community library, a Masonic Lodge, a pool hall, a teen canteen as well as showers and dressing rooms for the adjacent public swimming pool.

Riegel Stadium was built in 1931. The stadium was first used for football games in 1934. Lighting was installed a year later, allowing night games as well. In 1954, the stadium hosted an exhibition game between the Cincinnati Red Legs and The Washington Senators.

The town reached a peak in the early 1970s. However, gross mismanagement at the corporate level facilitated the rapid decline at this plant. Along with the decline, there was a sentiment among the younger folks in town of wanting to leave and find work and higher wages elsewhere, including Greenville. Only strong family ties kept what members of the new generation in town that did decide to stay.

Doomsday
September 26th, 1983,  first started out as Sunday like any other in a small town. No one could forsee what the day would hold.

~more to come~

Post Doomsday and Aftermath
~more to come~

Challenges and Threats

 * Surrounding Towns: Hodges, Due West, Shoals Junction. While usually non-violent in nature, raids from these towns would continue to be a nuisance until Ware Shoals formally joined Piedmont.


 * Bandits: Several groups operating out of Waterloo, in eastern Laurens County, would be a more serious problem. Several outlying farms were raided, homes broken into and the home-owners killed. As Ware Shoals residents prepared a response, a scouting mission from town went into Waterloo and found nothing but empty homes and dead bodies. Scouts continued all the way to Lake Greenwood. The bandits apparently slain by an unknown outside force, with evidence that an unknown number taken away by force. The scouts returned to town and reported in. Later a group went out and and buried the bodies and retrieve some livestock that was roaming free.


 * ~more to come~

Politics

 * Crime


 * Resources


 * Labor


 * Immigration (outsiders coming into town)

A plan to survive
"We should keep our heads down, maybe it would make us less of a target." anon person at the first emergency town hall meeting on Monday, September 27, 1983.

Early Problems and issues

 * Food & Water


 * Lack of Information

Local National Guard and Police Force
The Local National Guard unit, Delta Company, 111th Signal Battalion (MSE), and the 20 man Ware Shoals Police Department quickly realised they were going to need help and that help was not going to be coming any time soon. Local police and Guardsmen quicky reached an agreement to work together to set up a defence plan for the town. A series of barricade's on the roads and lookout post's was set up at various points around the town.

Local Citizens Militia
Headed by and trained by a Retired Army master sergeant.

First Contact with The Piedmont Republic
early 1992

Disaster: The "Riegel Mill Fire"
~April 1993

Accepting Aid.
"We cannot continue as we have done, we have done nothing but keep out heads down so low we have buried them in the sand, for the good of us ALL this has to change." Mayor Marion P. Carnell.

Incorporation into Piedmont
Ware Shoals becomes part of an enlarged Williamston County in June of 2011?