A Short History of Greenville

A Concise and engaging history that traces Greenville’s development from backcountry settlement to one of America’s best small cities

Today, Greenville, South Carolina, is regularly included on lists of the best cities and places to live in the United States. The present-day site of technological innovation nestled in the Piedmont of America’s Southeast, Greenville is promoted as a future-oriented city and weekend getaway for tourists interested in art, culture, nature, and cuisine. In this lively historical account illustrated with sixty images, author Judith T. Bainbridge invites readers to explore the full expanse of Greenville’s history, from its earliest days as Cherokee hunting grounds, to its development as a western outpost settlement and later a nineteenth-century summer resort. From the economic boom brought by the textile industry, to the bust of the Great Depression, and finally to the revitalization of the downtown as a haven for business and tourism in the twenty-first century, Bainbridge charts the development of this dynamic city.

Judith T. Bainbridge is professor emerita of English at Furman University. For nearly 35 years she has researched and written about Greenville’s heritage. She is the author of Historic Greenville: The Story of Greenville and Greenville County; Academy and College: The History of Furman University’s Women’s College; The Michelin Guide to Greenville, Furman University, and the Carolina Foothills; and Greenville’s Heritage, a collection of her articles from the Greenville News, for which she wrote a local history column for 22 years. Bainbridge is a former member of the County Historic Preservation Commission and a founder of the Historic Greenville Foundation.