Cherokee County, South Carolina, is hosting another round of community meetings to get feedback from residents and the public on preliminary trail recommendations for the Cherokee County Greenway Master Plan. The plan will be the county’s blueprint for trails and greenways identified for the Carolina Thread Trail (The Thread).

Three meetings will be held throughout the county; the same information will be provided at meeting. Each community meeting will be held from 6-7:30 p.m. with a formal presentation beginning at 6 p.m. A question-and-answer session will follow the presentations. The community will have the opportunity to learn more about the county’s greenway master planning process and where potential trails may be built or identified for the county and The Thread. The meeting dates and locations follow:

Tuesday, February 28: Spartanburg Community College, Gaffney Campus – Community Room, 523 Chesnee Hwy. (Hwy. 11), Gaffney, SC

Thursday, March 1: Blacksburg Community House, 103 S. Shelby Street, Blacksburg, SC

Tuesday, March 6: Corinth Baptist Church, 190 Corinth Road, Gaffney, SC

Meetings to launch this planning effort were held in the summer of 2011 to educate Cherokee County residents about the master plan and obtain initial feedback and trail suggestions. From those suggestions and other planning information, a more comprehensive greenway master plan was developed.

Trail master plans provide a long-term vision for the development and implementation of trails and greenways within a county and its communities. Cherokee County is one of three counties within The Thread’s 15-county target region yet to adopt such a plan. Currently, 85 miles of The Thread are open to the public in North and South Carolina with 14 active corridors under development. For more information on The Thread, go to http://www.carolinathreadtrail.org.

About The Carolina Thread Trail
The Carolina Thread Trail (The Thread) is a 15-county, two state initiative designed to inspire and facilitate the creation and development of a regional network of trails, blueways and conservation corridors that would link more than 2.3 million citizens. With technical resources and catalytic funding from The Thread, local communities will plan and implement their portions of this greenway-interstate system.  Catawba Lands Conservancy is the lead agency for The Thread, which is working in partnership with Foundation For The Carolinas and many local partners. For more information, go to http://www.carolinathreadtrail.org.

Legendary South Carolina historian and broadcaster Walter Edgar will launch Limestone’s College’s Renewing a Dream, Revisiting the South Series when he visits the campus on Monday, Feb. 20. Dr. Edgar‘s presentation, entitled “Limestone and South Carolina in the 1840s,” will begin at 7:00 p.m. in Fullerton Auditorium and will be followed by a reception in Winnie Davis Hall of History. The presentation and reception are free and open to the public.

Made possible by a grant from the Wachovia Foundation (now a part of Wells Fargo), the Renewing a Dream, Revisiting the South Series is designed to provide the local community and Limestone students free access to programs and exhibits from a wide array of historians, art collections, and performing artists with an emphasis on Southern history and culture.

A native of Mobile, Alabama, Dr. Edgar is in much demand as a speaker and annually delivers twenty-five to thirty talks and lectures to a wide variety of audiences. In addition to his scholarly pursuits, he is the host of two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: “Walter Edgar’s Journal,” a look at contemporary events in context and “South Carolina from A to Z.” Additionally, he is Director of the Institute for Southern Studies at the University of South Carolina, is a Carolina Trustee Professor, the Claude Henry Neuffer Professor of Southern Studies, the George Washington Distinguished Professor of History, and a Louise Fry Scudder Professor of Liberal Arts.

Dr. Edgar is author or editor of more than a dozen books on South Carolina and the American South, including his most recent publication The South Carolina Encyclopedia (2006) of which he was editor-in-chief. He is also the author of South Carolina: A History (1998) and Partisans and Redcoats: The Southern Campaign that Turned the Tide of the American Revolution (2001).

Dr. Edgar has also been active in the community as an officer or board member of numerous organizations including the South Carolina Historical Society, the Governor’s Mansion Foundation, the South Caroliniana Society, the South Carolina Archives and History Foundation, the Palmetto Conservation Foundation, the Friends of the Richland County Public Library, the Columbia Museum of Art, and Heathwood Hall Episcopal School.

In 1995 Dr. Edgar retired as a colonel in the Army Reserves after thirty years of commissioned service. Among his awards and honors are honorary degrees from Davidson College, the Citadel, Coker College, Newberry College, and Coastal Carolina University. In 2001 he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of South Carolina and in 2008 was inducted into the South Carolina Hall of Fame. He has been listed in Who’s Who in America since 1985.