This SC town is like a Christmas Hallmark movie location and among ‘coziest’ in US, rankings show
Tiny Pendleton in northwestern South Carolina is one of the largest historic districts in the country. The district covers the whole town.
That might account for the town being included recently on lists from two travel-related publications.
It’s one of 12 places in South Carolina that TravelAwaits considers a Christmas Hallmark town and one of 110 coziest towns in the country according to New York Travel Guides.
Population about 3,500, Pendleton was established in 1790. That’s 100 years before its northern neighbor, Clemson 4 miles away.
Dozens of buildings date back to the founding and into the 1800s, including St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, built in 1822. Clemson founders Thomas Greene Clemson and his wife, Anna Calhoun Clemson, are buried in the cemetery.
Also still standing are Ashtabula, a farmhouse built by Charleston planter Lewis Ladson Gibbes and Woodburn, built by another Charleston resident, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a Revolutionary War veteran and delegate to the Constitutional Convention.
“Today, the Village Green remains the focal point of the town with neat rows of antique shops, boutiques and restaurants drawing residents and visitors to the town center,” wrote Maire McAden, a former staffer with The Miami Herald who now lives in South Carolina. ”It is the site for many of the community’s most popular annual events, including the Pendleton Fall Harvest Festival and the Historic Pendleton Spring Jubilee, a juried arts and crafts festival held the first full weekend of each April.”
At Christmas, the focus is Christkindlmarkt, a European-style Christmas Market on the green under way now on Friday and Saturday nights until Dec. 16.
“Life moves at a slower pace, no one is a stranger, and the town’s history is fascinating,” Travel Awaits said. ”So, the transformation into a Hallmark Christmas movie town for the holidays is, like Pendleton itself, smooth and gentle.”
The green also features a live and lit 40-foot Christmas tree.
The Travel Awaits list in order included Greenville, Pelzer, Aiken, Easley, McCormick, Myrtle Beach, Murrells Inlet, Manning, Abbeville, Pendleton, Rock Hill, and Greenwood.
New York Travel Guides, which looked at 575 small towns and chose 110, offered a description of only the top 20 towns they selected.
Pendleton scored 99.1, second only to Santa Claus, Indiana, for visitor and photographer popularity. They looked at search interest during the months of December, January, and February, and Flickr posts from photographers.
That score was worth 25%.
Pendleton scored low on cozy weather, worth 15%, and cozy activities, 60%. The weather score was 63.9, a tie with four towns in California, Mississippi, Oregon and Texas. The lowest score in this category was Solvang, California at 63.7 followed by Marble Falls, Texas at 63.8..
Granted it doesn’t snow all that much in Pendleton.
On the ever important activities Pendlton scored 69.3, last place. This score was based on Christmas and/or winter festivals, the number of historic performing arts theaters, cozy restaurants, coffee shops and places to stay and the appearance of the town.
Clemson Pendleton Little Theatre is located in Clemson and there is one place to stay in Pendleton proper — a bed and breakfast called Liberty Hall, built in 1849. It’s been a family home, a dairy farm, a boarding house, university housing, an inn and a restaurant through the years.
The top 10 towns on New York Guides’ list are Leavenworth, Washington; Breckenridge, Colorado; Stowe, Vermont; Vail, Colorado; Aspen, Colorado; Lake Placid, New York; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Frankenmuth, Michigan, Petoskey, Michigan and Stillwater, Minnesota.
