Florence full of planning 100 years ago

Were you wondering what they were thinking about in Florence 100 years ago?
Well, neither was I actually, but browsing in Wayne King’s history of Florence County, I thought (wow!) they really had some stuff to think about during the first decade of the 20th century.
It was a period of strong growth here. In the 1900 Census, Florence had a population of 3,395. In 1910, it had risen to 7,657. That’s well over 100 percent.
They were talking about things like improving the water system, which was just a few years old, and the possibility of hard-surfacing streets. And there was the matter of sewage.
Cesspools and outhouses were among the methods of taking care of that up until that point. King did mention garbage carts as one of the methods of dealing with the problem. I’m not sure what that means and also don’t want to look further into it.
The City Council was thinking about a waste disposal system, and in 1908 got an estimate from a civil engineer that a system could be developed for $80,773.94. Then it dropped the idea for a year, but in 1909, voters were asked in a referendum to approve $80,000 in bonds to improve the water system and build a sewage system.
It passed, but then the state Supreme Court said one bond issue could not deal with water and sewer, so it was back to the drawing board. The question went to the voters again, this time asking for $30,000 in bonds for water system improvements and $70,000 for a sewer system. It was approved. Funny how prices go up.
Two things about $100,000 in bonds. First, Florence was a much smaller community then. And $100,000 was a whale of a lot — I mean really a lot — more money in 1909 than it is in 2009.
Anyway, they built 16 miles of sewer lines, and everybody felt good. Unfortunately, about four years later it was decided the system was in “very poor condition,” but somehow they kept it going.
Improvement of the water system probably was easy to get citizens behind, because Florence had suffered great fires that pretty nearly wiped out the downtown in the 1890s. Those fires were primarily why the town built a water system.
Florence’s first local ordinance dealing with automobiles came in 1905, King wrote. It made it unlawful “to drive or propel any automobile at a higher rate of speed on any street or public place in the city limits than eight m.p.h.” He noted that in 1915 there were 23 cases made for auto speed violations. However, that same year there were 50 charges of riding bikes on sidewalks. There obviously were many fewer autos around then than now.
It seems likely that autos were part of the reason that about 1909, the City Council was thinking about hard-surfacing streets.
The route from the railroad station down Church Street to the National Cemetery had been hard surfaced for some time with crushed rocks, the bill paid by the federal government. That was for the convenience of travelers coming here to visit the National Cemetery.
There were competing methods of hard-surfacing. The council decided on macadamization of Dargan Street from the Evans and Dargan intersection to Mount Hope Cemetery. That was similar to the earlier job on Church Street.
Bricks surfaced Evans Street from Church to the railroad, Irby Street from Evans to Front, Front Street from Irby to Dargan, and Dargan Street from Front to Evans.
Then there was bitulithic pavement which involved a concrete base with a broken stone and asphalt topping. This was used on 11 more downtown blocks.
Soon they were thinking about extensive hard-surfacing throughout the city. These were big projects for a community this size in the first decade of the century.
Among new buildings were the (now old) Post Office, (demolished) First Presbyterian Church, ACL passenger station off Day Street, and what became Poynor School.
President William Howard Taft spoke at the future Poynor School in 1909. The Florence tobacco market was going well, the railroad shops were booming, people were now used to electric and telephone service. And there was other stuff.
We can’t be sure what they were thinking about here 100 years ago, but they must have felt pretty good.

— Thom Anderson is a retired journalist who has 40 years experience with South Carolina newspapers, including the Morning News.