An Overview of the Pee Dee Area

The Pee Dee area of SC is home to the city of Florence and several small towns such as Bishopville, Darlington, Hartsville,  Marion, and Mullins, each having its own history and economic background. Much of our early history relates to the effects that the growing of cotton and  tobacco and the War Between the States had on this area of South Carolina.

SC Cotton Museum
South Carolina Cotton Museum, Bishopville
photo courtesy of South Carolina Cotton Museum


The “old days” in South Carolina’s economic development focused on the growing of  tobacco and cotton, both highly labor intensive. Visitors traveling throughout the Pee Dee can learn about our former cash crops at our tobacco museum in Mullins and our cotton museum in Bishopville.

A tour and narrative about the hewn-timber cabins used during the days of slavery and afterwards is provided at Francis Marion University in Florence (Francis Marion, the “Swamp Fox” of Revolutionary War fame, is the namesake of this state university.). Florence’s prisoner of war stockade, second in notoriety only to the prisoner stockade in Andersonville, Georgia, chronicles another aspect of the War Between the States.

As transitions have been made from an agricultural based society to a more diversified work force, some of our smaller towns have not yet made the transition or have lost jobs to overseas or off shore companies and unemployment is quite high. However, there are many success stories in the Pee Dee, as this area is home to several Fortune 500 companies and their spin off businesses. Mom and Pop type businesses continue to also grow.

Today’s economy in the Pee Dee is quite diversified and evidence of such changes range from the Alpaca Farm in Bishopville to international corporations such as Sonoco Products Company (Hartsville), La Roche Pharmaceutical (Florence) and Honda (Timmonsville).

The Darlington Southern 500 Race Track – a NASCAR favorite track, known as “the track too tough to tame” and “the Lady in Black” still has a strong following, but only one major NASCAR event is now run annually.  The races have been taken to the new and growing audiences in California, Mexico and the northeast! If you’re a race fan, the Joe Weatherly Museum, located at the racetrack is for you; as it highlights stock car history.