Town of Chapin

www.chapinsc.com

• Click Here for a Demographic Profile
• Click Here for a Community Profile

The Town of Chapin is located along Interstate 26 in northwestern Lexington County near Lake Murray.  The town is known as the “Capital of the Lake Murray Country.”

The town was first settled in the mid-1700s, when everything west of Columbia was frontier.  A group of German settlers, many of them armed with land grants from the English crown, laid claim to the land between the forks of the Saluda and Broad Rivers. It came to be known as the Dutch Fork, the "Dutch" being an anglicized form of Deutsch (referring to the German language and people.)

Few of the Fork's German settlers ever left its boundaries, and even fewer outsiders ever came to stay. In the 1800's, Dutch Forkers had developed their own subculture, their own particular--some would say peculiar--ways. Some still spoke German well into the 19th century, and those who didn't, had a dialect all their own. They measured success not in money or fame, but in family and community ties. They were poor, but proud. They made the most of the little they had. They believed in hard work, in saving up for even harder times, and in a benevolent God.

Martin Chapin came to the Dutch Fork from Cortland, New York. He was a different sort than his neighbors, and yet he shared many of their attributes. He suffered a lung ailment, and his doctors had advised that if he expected to live, he should head south to the Piney Woods and inhale the pine. And that he did.

With the arrival of the railroad in the 1800s, businesses sprang up and prospered and then a town. Martin Chapin gave the land for its streets. And on Christmas Eve, 1889, with its limits to extend three-quarters of a mile north, east and west from Martin Chapin's house, forming a square, the Town of Chapin was incorporated.

But the greater impact on life in Chapin was not the Depression, but the coming of new technology -- technology that would expand the boundaries, that would open up the Dutch Fork to the outside world. The automobile, electricity, the telephone, radio -- they all played a part.

But nothing could have prepared these poor folks, who had lived and worked the land along the banks of the Saluda River for years, for the tremendous social upheaval that resulted from the damming of the Saluda River in 1927 to create Lake Murray, and a source of hydro-electric power for South Carolina's Midlands.

At the time of its construction, the dam was the largest earthen dam in cubical content for power purposes in the world. The dam itself covers an area of around 99 acres, it is 208 feet high and 1 1/2 miles long.

But for all of the upheaval it caused then, likely, few in the 1920s could have imagined the tremendous impact Lake Murray would continue to have today -- far beyond its original purpose of providing a source of electric power.

Today, the lake is a vast area of water covering 78 square miles and approximately 50,000 acres of land. At its widest point, it is 41 miles long and 14 miles wide, providing storage for 763 billion gallons of water. It is the jewel of the Midlands, a water wonderland for fishing, sailing, swimming, skiing, or just sitting on your backporch looking out over the water at a beautiful South Carolina sunset.

The lake today is one of Chapin's grandest assets, the lure that attracts people from all parts of the country, who are looking for a great place to live and raise a family. And Chapin is truly "The Capital of Lake Murray."