A notice about the effort to raise funds to construct the SC Rock Art Center was recently placed on the SC DNR Web site, following an article in the Jocassee Journal, the department’s publication.
Pickens County Museum Executive Director Allen Coleman said he’s not sure yet if DNR will be raising funds for the center itself.
“I’m not sure how they’re going to do it,” he said.
The petroglyphs, discovered in 2003, include 17 depictions of human figures along with abstract art.
Museum officials hope to raise around $300,000 to construct the center, which will not only protect the rock art from the elements, but will also educate visitors as to their importance and history.
Fundraising for the center is progressing “slow but surely,” Coleman said.
“We’re right at the 100K mark,” he said. “We’re still working on it. We’re still hoping to break ground this fall.”
Members of the cultural commission hope that county officials will be able to allocate some funding for the project, Coleman said.
“At this point, I don’t know if they’ll be able to,” he said.
In addition to the human depictions — a rarity amongst petroglyph collections — the location of the rock art sets the Hagood Mill site apart.
Most of the petroglyphs in South Carolina are
located on private property — and even when the landowners grant access, most of the art can only be viewed after a long hike through steep terrain.
Not only are the Hagood Mill petroglyphs located on public land, the Pickens County Cultural Commission is hard at work on making the Hagood Mill site more accessible.
Museum officials hope to hear this month if the mill has been awarded a $10,000 Recreational Trails grant from the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism.
The grant, if awarded, would enable a wheelchair path to be built around the mill site, allowing disabled visitors to access the mill itself, the stage, the blacksmith forge, and the rock art center, once completed.
“They have not announced the recipients yet,” Coleman said.
Creating such a path has long been a goal of cultural commissioners.
While working to raise funds for the center, officials have been making tweaks to the initial design, to allow the center to better blend in with the rest of the Hagood Mill site.
To some, the original designs for the center looked out of place at the mill, so officials are making some adjustments.
“Some people were complaining,” Coleman said. “They thought it looked a little slick for the mill site.”
Tweaking the design allows the center to better represent the site as a whole, and will hopefully bring down costs of construction.
“We’re trying to make the whole goal more attainable,” Coleman said.
Donations towards the Rock Center are tax deductible, and can be made by sending a check payable to The Pickens County Museum, 307 Johnson St., Pickens, SC 29671. Find out more by contacting the museum at (864) 898-5963 or via e-mail at picmus@co.pickens.sc.us.
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