Caesars Head State Park - History

History

In 1825 the state engineer and noted architect Robert Mills described Caesars Head as a "mass of granite, rising from the vale, through which a rapid river winds its turbulent way...the ledges of stone, rising almost perpendicular, and at length, hanging over at top, so that they seem to totter to their fall."

After the completion of the Jones Gap Road in 1848, a former state senator, Benjamin Hagood, purchased about 2,400 acres around Caesars Head where he built a summer cottage, and later a hotel, “to take advantage of the area’s cool breezes, moderate temperatures, and breath-taking views.” The hotel closed in 1862, and Hagood died in 1865, leaving the property to his daughter Eliza and her husband, Dr. Francis Miles, the first physician in Pickens County. During the Civil War, the area was frequented by deserters from the Confederate Army, but by 1876 the Mileses were operating a health resort on the mountain.

In 1880, Miles sold the hotel to E. M. Seabrook of Charleston, who enlarged the inn and associated cottages but was unable to pay off the mortgage. In 1885, the property reverted to Miles, who was said to have been “a model innkeeper” of a “comfortable primitive hotel.” In 1897, the Mileses deeded the property to Furman University in exchange for an annuity and free room and board for the rest of their lives. In 1924, Furman sold the property to a development company interested in selling lots for summer homes. The hotel continued to operate even when the land developer failed during the Depression. In 1946 brothers Pete and Tom Marchant bought the property and added tennis courts and a swimming pool. The hotel a cottage, and the adjacent servants' quarters—the original Hagood house—burned in the early morning of September 9, 1954. The Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism acquired the park lands from various owners between 1976 and 1986.