History

Simpsonville had its beginnings in the 1820s, as a stage stop operated by Thomas Goldsmith on the Old Stage Road twelve miles south of the Greenville Court House.

Among the first businesses at the crossroads were Silas Gilbert, who in 1836 opened a large general merchandising operation at the crossroads, and then Peter Simpson, who two years later set up a blacksmith shop next to Gilbert.

The same year Simpson arrived, in 1838, the place was assigned a post office in the house of neighbor Jarrett Cook entitled 'Plain'.

Traffic on the Stage Road was fairly brisk until the 1850s when the burgeoning village fell into a virtual standstill throughout the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Early in the Reconstruction period the black population, who were leaving their respective churches of mixed congregations, gravitated to a more central location for worship and Cedar Grove Baptist Church became, in 1870, the first church organized within the present city limits.

In 1885, the Simpsonville High School was established and North Carolina native, Sidney J. Wilson, had streets and lots surveyed for the making of a town that would straddle the grade for the new railroad track. These streets and lots today remain laid out in what are largely their original beds. Although the place had been alternately known as Plain and Simpsonville for quite some time, the post office was officially changed to Simpsonville in 1885.

In 1908 the Woodside brothers constructed the Woodside Cotton Mill and village that remained the city's largest employer until after WWII. In 1953 a major water line from Greenville was laid and triggered the growth of industry and residential development for the next twenty-five years. In the meantime Hwy 276 was widened in 1956 eventually becoming the middle portion of I-385 and access to Simpsonville's industry and housing exploded.

By 1994 Simpsonville was the fastest growing city with population less than 25,000 in the nation.

 

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