Rivers and mountains and waterfalls surround a town with deep German roots.
Main Street Walhalla circa 1900.
It was the name that did it. That, and the beautiful 160-year-old Lutheran church.
As a lifelong Lutheran and graduate of Norwegian-rooted St. Olaf College, how could I resist a town named Walhalla?
Postcard of storied Issaqueena Falls, circa 1900.
Which is how the Germans spell Valhalla, the Norse concept of Heaven. The Garden of the Gods: a magnificent palace, where kings and slain warriors lived eternally, well-fed and safe and, well, heroically.
All of which sounded like just the ticket as the COVID pandemic wears on, and on.
Like most things now, my travel was virtual. But the stories told are real, the photos shared enticing—and when it’s safe to travel, I’ll be there.
As I have found with nearly every small town I’ve written about in this column, you have to understand the past if the present is going to make real sense. And for Walhalla, the past is German.
Specifically, immigrant Germans living in Charleston, South Carolina, where the long-lasting, humid heat made them long for home. One of them, Johann Andreas Wagener—who went by John when he settled in Charleston in 1833—formed the German Colonization Society in order to help his fellow Germans find farmland and cooler days. They found it in the Pickens district, in far northwest South Carolina. For $27,000, the well-to-do Germans bought more than 17,000 acres of land, in a place they called Walhalla, “the pleasant hall, the real heaven of our German forebearers.”
In careful German order, the Society laid out the town of Walhalla in a strict grid, pointing it in a direction not receiving direct sun to mitigate summer heat. On both sides of Main Street ran half- and full-acre lots. Beyond these lay 50-acre farm plots. The outlying land was divided into both large and small tracts. And in the spring of 1850, paying Society members drew lots for land parcels. The only caveat was that within three years, each parcel of land had to have a building on it.
It wasn’t just the farmland and mountains that drew the Germans to this part of South Carolina. The Blue Ridge Railroad was in the planning stages, to run from Charleston to Knoxville, Tennessee. The German Colonization Society saw potential profit in being the last supply stop before crossing into Tennessee.
Restored O.J. Gude Bull Durham wall mural, discovered during the restoration of Walhalla’s Durham Hall Event Center.
Problem was, those railroad planners underestimated the obstacle of the Upcountry mountains, and tunneling under Walhalla’s Stumphouse Mountain proved undoable. The tunnel was half-completed when the State abandoned the project, and Walhalla was the end of the line.
Not ones to let building material go to waste, German residents constructed a number of the buildings in their town of Stumphouse stone, including the Oconee Military Museum at Patriots’ Hall. Today, the mountain is part of the New Mountain Bike Path, 10 miles of riding beauty just off the Appalachian Trail.
Centuries before the Germans arrived, South Carolina Upcountry was Cherokee territory—and Walhalla’s Cherokee history runs long and deep. Issaqueena Falls, 100 feet high in the Sumter National Forest, is part of that: the site where, legend has it, a young girl hid on a ledge behind the falls after warning settlers of an imminent Cherokee attack. Walhalla’s Museum of the Cherokee Indian in South Carolina is the place to go to see a large collection of Cherokee artifacts, most found in farmers’ fields and along the region’s many rivers. In addition, the Oconee History Museum offers visitors a self-guided tour of the area’s history.
The automobile comes to Walhalla’s Main Street, late 1920s.
That was then, and now is now. Walhalla is a new Main Street community, and good things are happening. The small city of 4,200 has lured back some of its native sons and daughters, who are investing in Walhalla and its future.
Lana Justice grew up in Walhalla, and as a young mother brought her children back to visit their grandparents. “You’d drive up, and it was just beautiful, the town with mountains rising up.”
A few years ago, Justice and her husband opened an event venue on Main Street, Durham Hall.
A 1950s couple visiting the half-completed Stumphouse Mountain.
“During the renovation of the building,” she says, “I was removing plaster from the brick wall, and found a pristine Bull Durham tobacco mural painted there over 100 years ago by O.J. Gude, ‘the Patriarch of Outdoor Signage.’ His work was all over Times Square.”
St. John’s Lutheran Church, circa 1900.
They own a number of other buildings in Walhalla, and their enthusiasm for their town runs deep. “It’s a special town—we’re 20 minutes to rivers with Class V rapids and amazing waterfalls. We’re surrounded by natural barriers to overpopulation—the lakes and mountains.”
Greg Harris’s great-great-grandfather was a member of the German Colonization Society who bought land in Walhalla. Harris returned home after an international marketing career with Time magazine and opened Gather 205, a restaurant, coffee shop, and “revisioned” furniture gallery. The fifth-generation Walhallan lives in his great-grandfather’s house and is active in Partners for Progress, formed to save Walhalla’s historic buildings and a moving force in the town’s progress.
Harris is skilled at sharing a bird’s-eye view of Walhalla’s history: “The Germans brought a biergarten, vineyards and distilleries with them. But South Carolina’s 1916 Distillery Act got rid of them before national Prohibition.” (It’s worth noting that another of Harris’s great-great-grandfathers was the brewmaster of Walhalla—and Harris has his original recipe.)
“Walhalla has a great story behind it,” Harris says.
Arguably the most vital telling of that story occurs in October, during Walhalla’s longstanding Oktoberfest, when Walhallans bring out the lederhosen and dirndls, bratwurst and German beer for a celebration of their German heritage. Last year, Oktoberfest became a month-long event to encourage smaller gatherings, a change that will continue going forward.
“We believe in this town,” Lana Justice says. “We’re on the cusp. You know how it is—you live in a place, and you sometimes can’t see what you have. People are beginning to see Walhalla again—and they’re excited.”
Completely understandable when you live in The Garden of the Gods.
The story above first appeared in our March/April 2021 issue. To get more like it, subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!