HAMBURG

NAME: Hamburg COUNTY: Aiken ROADS: 2WD GRID: 5 CLIMATE: hot in summer BEST TIME TO VISIT: nothing left to visit

COMMENTS: The dead town of Hamburg, South Carolina was once a thriving upriver market located in Edgefield District (now Aiken County). It was founded by Henry Shultz in 1821 as a rival place of trade to Augusta, Georgia (Cordle 1940:82). In its heyday, 60,000 bales of cotton worth $2,000,000 were brought by wagon to Hamburg each year (Chapman 1897:237). This cotton continued by pole boat or steam boat to the ports of Charleston or Savannah for subsequent shipment to manufacturers in New England or Europe. With the Augusta Canal (1848) and general expansion of railroads in the 1850's, strenuous overland hauls to Hamburg became unnecessary and the famous wagon traffic declined (Chapman 1897:238). REMAINS: There are no visible remains of the original town of Hamburg

Occasionally styled as Hamburgh, the town was named after Shultz's home town in Germany, and was located at 33.4799°N, 81.9579°W directly across the Savannah River from Augusta, Georgia. Population at its peak in the 1840s reached 2,500 (Haskel 1843:257), and exceeded 1,000 in the 1870s (Budiansky 2008). Under protection of the Clarks Hill Dam and Lake, adjacent North Augusta has begun to grow back over old Hamburg. During his American tour as 'Guest of the Nation', the Marquis de Lafayette visited Hamburg on March 24, 1825 (Cashin 1980:86). The South Carolina Railroad was the world's first railroad in the modern pattern. Providing scheduled steam service over 136 miles of line from Charleston to Hamburg, it was the world's longest at its completion in 1833 (Derrick 1930:58-59) Submitted by: Marc Boulware

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