The 39th celebration featured refreshments and activities designed to celebrate survivors and share resources. Among the activities and features were reiki, yoga, fly fishing lessons, therapy dogs, survivor ribbons and children’s princess visits.

Photos provided by Sliced Tomato Productions via Cancer Survivors Park.

Read more about the Cancer Survivors Park

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Long before Greenville earned its reputation as an award-winning destination, it served as a summer refuge for wealthy Lowcountry families fleeing the heat and disease of coastal South Carolina.

During the antebellum era, planters from Charleston and the rice coast traveled to the Upcountry seeking relief from malaria, yellow fever and brutal summer conditions. Greenville’s elevation, cooler air and mineral springs made it a fashionable seasonal retreat. One of the most important destinations was Chick Springs, near present-day Taylors.

Developed in the late 1830s by Dr. Burwell Chick, the resort quickly became one of the best-known watering places in the region. Contemporary accounts noted that many Lowcountry families built cottages on the surrounding hills.

These visitors did not arrive alone.

Planter families traveled with enslaved cooks, nurses, carriage drivers, laundresses and domestic servants who recreated plantation life away from the coast. Advertisements for Chick Springs charged “children and servants” half-price for board, a small detail that revealed how completely enslaved labor remained embedded in the resort economy.

Greenville lacked the vast plantation landscapes of the Lowcountry but it was drawn into the same slave-based economy that generated coastal wealth. Money produced through rice and cotton flowed into Upcountry hotels, merchants, transportation systems and landowners.

Transportation improvements deepened the connection. Early visitors endured long stagecoach rides from Columbia, but railroad expansion transformed travel by the 1850s. A traveler could leave Charleston in the morning and reach Greenville by afternoon, integrating the Upcountry into a broader Southern tourism economy.

Chick Springs also functioned as a social center for the planter class. Guests attended dances, concerts and dinners in an environment that preserved coastal hierarchies while offering escape from coastal conditions.

Much of this history has faded from view. Greenville often presents itself as distinct from the plantation culture that defined much of antebellum South Carolina. Chick Springs tells a more complicated story.

The Upcountry looked different from Charleston and the rice coast. But it remained connected to the same systems of wealth, slavery and power that shaped the 19th-century South – benefiting from them, accommodating them, and in some ways depending on them.

Next: Before Furman University became one of Greenville’s defining institutions, its origins were tied to Baptist theology, cotton wealth, and slavery — a story of how faith, education and human bondage coexisted and reinforced one another in the antebellum South.

Russell Stall is a Greenville native, former at-large Greenville City Council member, and certified city planner. He serves as executive director of the Greenville County Historical Society. For more information, visit greenvillehistory.org.

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Photos provided by St. Joseph’s Catholic School/David Lawrence Photography

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The bear(s)

• Over the last year, 13 people have been killed by bears in Japan, with an additional 50,000 sightings recorded. The bears roamed near schools and broke into homes, supermarkets and resorts. Now, Japanese company Ohta Seiki has come up with a unique solution to the country’s bear problem: robot wolves. Yahoo! News reported on May 13 that orders for the animatronic “Monster Wolf” are up by so much that the waiting list is a few months long. “We make them by hand,” company president Yuji Ohta said. “We cannot make them fast enough now. We are asking our customers to wait two to three months.” The “wolves” are made of pipe frames attached to speakers and covered with artificial fur. They can make up to 50 different sounds, including recorded human voices and electronic noises, and their eyes and tails flash with red and blue LEDs. Orders have come mainly from people who work in rural areas, such as farmers, construction workers and golf course operators. The wolf apparatus starts at $4,000. [Yahoo! News, 5/13/26]
• Meanwhile, in Tennessee, Gatlinburg police were called upon to free a black bear that had locked itself in a bathroom at a downtown Quality Inn and Suites, Fox News reported on May 11. In the wee hours of the morning on Friday, May 8, a hotel employee called for help because they “observed a bear enter an exterior bathroom and lock itself inside,” according to the police report. When police arrived on the scene, one officer carefully opened the bathroom door while the other beat sticks together to draw the bear out. In the end, the bear ambled out, seemingly unbothered, leaving behind only minor property damage to the tune of $50. [Fox News, 5/11/26]

Seen this movie before

Americans abroad

I’m lovin’ it

Years in the making

Well, well, well, how the turntables …

— distributed by Andrews McMeel Syndication

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Return of the mac

Blazing wrenches

Now boarding

It’s come to this

Nature gone wild

The tech revolution

Awesome!

— distributed by Andrews McMeel Syndication

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Unleash the bees

• Rebecca Woods, 59, of Massachusetts, was found guilty of assault and battery after unleashing hives of bees on officers who were in the process of evicting a friend of hers, The Guardian reported on April 28. One officer had to be hospitalized and others were stung repeatedly. In addition, Woods lost about a thousand bees in the kerfuffle. Some were crushed by the hives as she tried to move them, and some were female honeybees that perished after employing their stingers. Woods’ lawyer, Mary Saldarelli, said that Woods’ own experiences with being evicted compelled her to intervene on her friend’s behalf, a cancer patient in his 80s. The man was not at home when Woods unleashed her bees, having gone to the library to try to find information about halting the eviction. Woods was sentenced to six months in jail. [The Guardian, 4/28/26]
• Meanwhile, in Arizona, two men were attacked by what sheriff’s deputies called a “moving black cloud of hundreds of thousands of angry bees,” People Magazine reported on April 29. The Greenlee County Sheriff’s Office described the men as “completely covered head to toe in bees.” Firefighters donned protective gear, but the bees still managed to sting several on their heads. No ambulances were available, so the men got a ride to the hospital in the fire truck while firefighters picked the bees off them. Officials were unable to locate a hive, and suspect the bees were part of a migrating swarm. Both men have been released from the hospital. [People, 4/29/26]

Oddly specific

Hole-y ground

Shell game

Crying wolf

Bringing the artificial to the intelligence

— distributed by Andrews McMeel Syndication

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Photos provided by Greenville County Sheriff’s Office

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It’s a bird, it’s a plane …

• A spring football game at Virginia Tech was delayed after a parachuter crashed into the scoreboard over the school’s football field, Lane Stadium, the New York Post reported on April 18. Shortly before the game, which was scheduled to start at 3 p.m., two parachuters could be seen gliding over the field. The first one flew safely over, while the second crashed into the board, between the “C” and “H” in “Tech.” Emergency personnel were able to retrieve the parachuter safely, and the skydiver was not hospitalized. While fans waited for the game to start, the board displayed an explanation for the delay: “Attention please. We are waiting for EMTs to get out of the board. Thank you for your patience.” Over on X, Virginia Tech Athletics said, “We are grateful to report the skydiver was safely secured and is currently stable. Our primary focus remains on their well-being.” The football game resumed at 4 p.m. [New York Post, 4/18/26]
• That same day, on the other side of the country, a hot air balloon carrying 13 passengers made an unexpected stop in a backyard in Temecula, California, ABC 7 News reported. According to witnesses, the pilot announced that a lack of wind and dwindling fuel supply meant he had to land. “He was trying to get us to the street, but we couldn’t get to the street in time, so we landed in the people’s backyard, safe and sound,” passenger Brianna Avalos said. “He was an amazing pilot!” Neighbors alerted the homeowners, Hunter and Jenna Perrin, of the incident. “I open the sliding glass door, and there’s a basket full of 13 people in my backyard!” Hunter said. “The pilot … got it right down inside, directly into the backyard, where there was nothing. The balloon didn’t catch on anything. No one was injured.” [ABC 7, 4/19/26]

Hot dog!

Uncanny

Here’s the buzz

A-moose-ing

— distributed by Andrews McMeel Syndication

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Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a continuing series of columns, stories and photos by Greenville County Historical Society examining the history of Greenville and the Upstate.

By the time Greenville began to take shape as a place on the map, the most violent part of its story had already happened.

One of the clearest examples came on Feb. 1, 1760, during the Anglo-Cherokee War. A Cherokee war party attacked a wagon train of settlers fleeing the Long Cane Creek settlement in what is now Abbeville County, about 50 miles southwest of present-day Greenville. Around 150 settlers were trying to reach Augusta as violence spread across the backcountry. When the attack ended, at least 23 people were dead, most of them women and children.

For generations, Long Cane was remembered as one of the great tragedies of the Carolina frontier. And it was. Families were shattered. Survivors carried that memory for the rest of their lives.

That is part of the story. It is not the whole story.

Long Cane was not a story of settlers attacked in an empty wilderness. By 1760, colonial settlement had been pushing deeper into Cherokee territory for decades. What settlers saw as opportunity, Cherokee communities experienced as encroachment and loss. The violence at Long Cane did not come out of nowhere. It grew out of a longer struggle over land, power and survival.

The British response made that plain. Cherokee towns were burned. Food stores were destroyed. Cornfields were cut down. Those were not simply military reprisals. They were attacks on the foundations of Cherokee life, meant to bring hunger, displacement and surrender.

Accounts of frontier attacks spread through letters, militia reports and family recollections. The fear was real. So was the grief. But those memories also became part of the case for retaliation and, eventually, possession of the land. Settlers suffered. Later, that suffering was used to justify the dispossession of Cherokee people.

The legal turning point came in 1777 with the Treaty of DeWitt’s Corner, when the Cherokee were forced to cede most of their remaining South Carolina land, including what would become Greenville County. We should be careful with the word treaty. It sounds mutual. DeWitt’s Corner was not. It gave legal cover to a transfer of land that violence had already made possible.

Long Cane belongs in Greenville’s history because it helps explain what had to happen before Greenville could exist. Before Greenville could be built, Cherokee land was taken.

Up next: Follow Richard Pearis to the Reedy River, where ambition, uncertainty and contested land shaped the earliest white settlement in what would become Greenville.

Russell Stall is a Greenville native, former at-large Greenville City Council member, and certified city planner. He serves as executive director of the Greenville County Historical Society. For more information, visit greenvillehistory.org.

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2026 Hands on Greenville Day by the numbers

• 1,900 plus volunteers
• 50 plus projects
• 7,600 service hours
• $275,000 estimated community value

Photos provided by United Way of Greenville County.

Related: United Way’s Hands On Greenville Day returns May 2

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Photos by A Popp Photography via Girls On the Run Upstate South Carolina

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