Lake View Main Street, South Carolina

In collaboration with Dillon County Theatre Association in South Carolina, Liz Herlong's Broadcast Journalism student Emily Jones produced this story about Lake View Main Street. Featuring interviews with Matthew Hayes and Debbie Jordan, it explores how Main Street businesses have changed and what Main Street is like today. Lake View High School aired a different segment about the area each Wednesday morning on the Gator TV Morning News broadcast as part of a series called, "Way Back Wednesdays." It was created for Museum on Main Street's Stories: YES program.

Speaker 1: Throughout history, Lake View South Carolina has changed and developed. What was once a dusty old road is now a thriving community, The center of it being Main Street. The first building in town was Hayes Hardware. Hayes Hardware was built in 1907 by the Hayes brothers.

Speaker 2: [0:19] Alright, I'm Matthew Hayes, I run Hayes Hardware in Lake View South Carolina. And the store was started by my great grandfather and his brother Chatty and Charlie Hayes. And they ran it together as Hayes Brothers Hardware until around the 1950s, early '50s. In '51, I believe Chatty died. Charlie was also close behind. And my grandfather, Carleton Hayes, had just graduated college, and he moved here and ran the hardware. And in '62 incorporated it to just Hayes Hardware. It's been that way ever since.

Speaker 2: [1:12] Granddaddy Carleton Hayes died in '98. In '98 it went to my grandmother at the time, his wife, Elaine Hayes, with controlling interest to my father, John Hayes, and from '98 until '08, it was ran by my grandmother and Tim Smith. They didn't do much with it. And then in '08, 2008, I came here to help my dad get it back on track and to try to keep a family business going. March will be my 11th year here this year, and we hope to keep it going for another a hundred.

Speaker 1: [2:00] Hayes Hardware is doing thriving business on Main Street and continues to revive for our community. Across the street resides the First Baptist Church of Lake View. The church was built in 1920 and the first pastor was James Smith. Though the original is no longer standing, the current First Baptist Church stands in the same place.

Speaker 3: [2:20] Main Street in Lake View as I remember it was always really busy. You had your main street. We had a drug store and not only was it the drug store, but we had a fountain area with the stools that you could sit there and you order fountain drinks and you could get chips and packs of crackers, ice cream, your normal things that you would find.

Speaker 3: [2:52] Then on Friday nights or on Thursday nights after football games or basketball games, the main place to go, all the students that didn't have vehicles or parents were not picking them up after the games at the schoolhouse, everybody walked from the schoolhouse up to the Dairy Maid.

Speaker 1: [3:34] A few other important locations on Main Street are the Lake View Barbershop and the Lake View Police Department. In all of my research, I learned that though Lake View is a small, quiet town, it has not always been this way, and it is home.

Asset ID: 8546
Themes: Crossroads, small towns, history, football, local business
Date recorded: 2019
Length of recording: 3:58 m
Related traveling exhibition: Crossroads: Change in Rural America
Sponsor or affiliated organization: Dillon County Theatre Association, Dillon, South Carolina
More information: https://museumonmainstreet.org/blog-node/south-carolina-students-kickstart-conversation-around-change