The Aikenite: Whiskey Road

     Love the shopping or hate the traffic, we all travel Aiken's "other mainstreet," Whiskey Road. It traces a path through some of Aiken's most historic homes and makes the well-known intersection with Easy Street. Travel further and you see the first shopping centers that were built as downtowns across the country begin to decline and retail business moved closer to suburban shoppers. Follow to the outskirts of our city limits and you will have passed restaurants, chain stores, a mall. You can turn into any of many neighborhoods, from the original housing offered to the early workers at the Savannah River Site to the upscale homes in Woodside Plantation, a gated community where many people from all over the country have chosen to retire.

           Why name a road Whiskey? Well, before the Revolutionary War, rum was shipped from the Bahamas to Port Royal in Beaufort County, SC. It was then put in barrels and hauled by mules into the mountains. Part of the dirt road they traveled on ran through Aiken and became known as Whiskey Road. In the 1940's a ladies group called The Aiken Improvement Society decided the name had an immoral connotation that they did not want associated with their town. They had the name changed to Cherokee Road. This change was made over a summer when many of those who occupied historical homes along Whiskey Road were out of town. When they returned they complained loudly enough about the name change that it was returned once again to our Whiskey Road.

     I love the Aiken Downtown Development Associations collection of Christmas ornaments that depict different well-known places in Aiken. One of these is the famous Whiskey/Easy intersection.