By Scott Graber
It’s Tuesday, and I’m at the Shellring Ale Works in Port Royal. This evening I’m with about 100 people who have gathered to hear Dean Moss talk about the gestation, birthing and the early childhood of the Spanish Moss Trail.
Dean’s story begins in 2007 when he was the Manager at the Beaufort-Jasper Water and Sewer Authority (BJWSA) and the railroad was then owned by the State Ports Authority. Moss knew about the railroad — it chugged through his backyard — and he knew the Ports Authority was about to abandon the line.
I remember these times because I had been the attorney for the railroad and often required to say “no” to hard charging developers wanting to create new crossings in order to build new subdivisions on Battery Creek.
I had more than one opportunity to say “no” and would then face an enraged man who would say, “We’ll see what Senator Waddell has to say about that!”
Looking around at tonight’s attendees, I don’t see anyone who was around in those days — the actors in the railroad’s demise having long since departed.
But Appleton’s railroad did prosper in the beginning; however things went south when the line was acquired by the Central of Georgia in the 1890s.
In 1893 the phosphate-mining industry died thanks to an unnamed hurricane and a phlegmatic Governor — “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman. Thereafter, long staple cotton atrophied at the hands of the Boll Weevil. By the turn of the century a few old locomotives — now operating as the newly conceived Charleston and Western Carolina line — still connected Port Royal and Augusta.
Before and during World War I, the Whipples, Grays, Bentons, McLeods and others began planting lettuce, Irish potatoes and cabbages, thus bringing the golden age of “truck farming” to Beaufort County. Railroads (not trucks) made it possible to get freshly harvested turnips and tomatoes to New York and Philadelphia.
When I arrived in Beaufort (in 1970), there were still “packing sheds” all along the rail line in Sheldon, Dale, Burton and Beaufort. One can still see the remnants of one, crumbling rail-dependent building — the Pickle Factory — near the Technical College of the Lowcountry (TCL) in Beaufort.
But paved highways and refrigerated trucks would (almost) put an end to vegetable farming in Beaufort County — though one can still view sprawling fields of just-planted tomatoes on St. Helena Island.
By 1980, the Port was reduced to sporadic shipments of Kaolin brought down from Georgia and dumped into the belly of the Repap Enterprise — a freighter that carried this clay to Canada.
By 2007, the S.C. Ports Authority and its railroad were ready to leave; “And as a utility manager I knew that a utility easement was the same as gold,” Dean Moss told his audience.
But Moss also knew that this miles-long, perfectly level corridor could open-up biking and hiking to breathtaking scenery that was largely hidden from the public. When Moss dreamed he dreamed of the “Tour de France” and knew bicycle-riding could, actually, extend one’s life.
As the Manager of BJWSA, Moss knew they controlled the potable water and sewer service absolutely essential for any development — and would often leverage that “capacity” when dealing large, intractable developers used to getting everything they wanted.
One of the largest landowners on the trail, for example, did not want the trail to subdivide his hunting fields. Moss met with this man, realized that there was an opportunity here, and agreed to re-route the trail around his property in return for financial support.
Eventually that support would pay for 40% of the entire trail.
Small problems remain.
Moss believes the Trail should be connected to downtown Beaufort and it was his plan make this connection by way of Bay Street as that fabulous, live oak-festooned street runs from the Downtown Marina to Ribaut Road.
There was a conceptual plan presented to City Council; but many folks along Bay Street rose up and, according to Councilman Neil Lipsitz, remain vehemently opposed to anything near the Bluff.
“The downtown connection is now in the hands of the City,” Moss told his audience.
More recently Dominion Energy demanded that certain “memorial trees” — planted along the Trail in Hundred Pines— be removed. Dominion claimed these trees, when mature, will interfere with its transmission lines.
“We’re working with Rep. Shannon Erickson and Senator Tom Davis to find a solution,” Moss said.
Notwithstanding these issues, it’s hard to image this Trail without the energy and imagination of Dean Moss.
Note: This piece would have been impossible without constant reference to “Bridging the Sea Islands’ Past and Present, 1893-2006” by Lawrence Rowland and Stephen Wise, University of S.C. Press, 2015.
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.