Vaucluse, South Carolina facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Vaucluse, South Carolina
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Census-designated place and Unincorporated community
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Vaucluse mill houses in January 2007
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 Vaucluse, South Carolina
Location in South Carolina
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| Country |  United States of America |
| State |  South Carolina |
| County |  Aiken |
| Population
(2010)
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| • Total | 111 |
| Time zone | UTC-5 (Eastern (EST)) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC-4 (EDT) |
| ZIP code |
29850
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| Area code(s) | 803, 839 |
| GNIS feature ID | 1251291 |
Vaucluse is a small place in Aiken County, South Carolina, in the United States. It is an unincorporated community. This means it is not officially a town or city with its own local government. Instead, it is part of the larger county. Vaucluse is also part of the bigger Augusta, Georgia metropolitan area.
Contents
History of Vaucluse
Vaucluse is about 3 miles (4.8 km) from Graniteville and 6 miles (9.7 km) from Aiken. It is famous for being the home of an early textile mill. A textile mill is a factory where cloth is made from fibers like cotton.
The First Mill
The first mill in Vaucluse was started in 1833 by a local farmer named Christian Breithaupt. It had 50 workers, 1500 spindles (machines for spinning thread), and 25 looms (machines for weaving cloth). Later, other important people like George McDuffie and William Gregg invested in the mill.
William Gregg was a very important person in the history of textile mills in South Carolina. He noticed that the Vaucluse mill had some problems. It did not have enough money, it was too small, and it made too many different types of products. It also did not have strong daily management.
Vaucluse as a Training Ground
Even with its problems, the Vaucluse mill was very useful for William Gregg. He learned a lot from it. He used what he learned to build his very successful Graniteville mill in 1847. Vaucluse helped him understand how to make a textile mill work well.
Gregg once said that even a simple house for a manager in Lowell, Massachusetts, cost more than the whole village of Vaucluse. At that time, Vaucluse had over 200 people living there.
Later Years of the Mill
Around 1880, a new mill building was built in Vaucluse. It had 300 workers and 10,000 spindles. The Graniteville Company owned this mill for many years. However, it closed down more recently. The area where the mill workers lived, called the Vaucluse Mill Village Historic District, is now on the National Register of Historic Places. This means it is a special place recognized for its historical importance.
Becoming an Official Town
Recently, there have been discussions about making Vaucluse, along with nearby Graniteville and Warrenville, into official towns. This process is called "incorporation." If a community incorporates, it gets its own local government.
The Vote on Incorporation
The people in these communities voted on whether to become an official municipality. A municipality is a town or city with its own government. If approved, the new municipality would cover about 20 square miles (52 sq km).
Vaucluse was the only one of the three communities where many people were against becoming an official town. One reason was that the proposed new town limits would only include about half of the village. This is because a new town needs to have a certain number of people living in each square mile. Including the other half of Vaucluse would have made it impossible to meet this rule.
See also
In Spanish: Vaucluse (Carolina del Sur) para niños
