Road Trip to NaNo: Writing in the Heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains

NaNoWriMo is a worldwide event, and we’re taking a Road Trip to NaNo to hear about the stories being written every year in our hundreds of participating regions. Today, Linda Bennett, Municipal Liaison for the USA :: South Carolina :: Greenville region, shares how her region has shaped her writing:

My region, Greenville, is a county tucked up near the Blue Ridge Mountains, in the northwest corner of South Carolina. The county seat is also named Greenville; it’s a busy, lively little city situated just north of the county’s center. But it didn’t used to be so busy or lively.

Greenville’s history is one of textiles. There were cotton mills studded all around the city, creating little neighborhoods or mill towns with their own stores, clusters of homes, and even their own baseball teams. The remnants of that era can still be seen in the names of the neighborhoods and the tall water towers that marked each mill.

But the textile industry died in Greenville and the city almost died with it. The city was depressed, the downtown full of closed shops and restaurants.

Then a mayor named Max Heller had a vision. He saw the downtown as a European city, with museums and shops and restaurants all within walking distance. So he did what mayors do to raise money and brought that vision to life. He took two traffic lanes of Main Street to build wide sidewalks and parking for cars. He planted trees along the sidewalks. He built a public art museum and a public library next to it, then a theater on the other side.