Return to Newry

Several weeks ago I did a solo kayaking trip from Lawrence Bridge on Lake Hartwell up to the mill village of Newry. I’d done this trip before back in 2010, but thought it was high time I made a return. In those 12 years there have been many changes. The old abandoned textile mill at Newry has been transformed into luxury apartments. I wanted to see just how much things had changed. TLDR; somethings have changed, some have not.

The delay in writing this post is because I wanted to get two perspectives, one from the water, and one from the land. This past week Ken Cothran and I made another trip to Newry, this time to have lunch at the Newry General Store and Cafe, and to see how the village itself is changing.

I made many visits to Newry, but only explored the old mill twice – first in 2010 by water, then in 2011 from land. I already wrote about the history in those posts, so I won’t repeat it here. I will quote my initial impression of the village, which still holds true….

Newry is a fascinating little community. It’s almost like a step back in time. Though close to Clemson, the area is somewhat isolated by its geography. At the top of the hill are multi-million dollar homes on Lake Keowee. Below the dam is the little mill village with humble wood frame houses and the now-abandoned mill.

One point of clarification, though… Today the name “Newry” is used interchangeably to refer the village as well as the mill. The mill was actually called Courtenay Mills after Ash Courtenay and the company he established, Courtenay Manufacturing. The village is named Newry after Courtenay’s home place in Ireland.

Paddling to Newry

I got to the Lawrence Bridge Landing on Lake Hartwell about mid-morning on Monday, April 1 – April Fool’s Day. I was hoping that a Monday wouldn’t be too busy, but it seems people had that day off after the Easter weekend. There were lots of boats coming and going, most of them fishermen out for an early morning catch. I launched quickly and got out of their way. I headed north along the Keowee River Branch and under Lawrence Bridge.

This part of the lake is really quite lovely. The land is owned by Clemson and is part of the Clemson Experimental Forest. The banks aren’t consumed by overpriced McMansions.

About a mile from the bridge the Little River branch connects with the Keowee River branch of the lake from the west. This is a narrower channel, but still scenic at the confluence.

That scenery doesn’t hold, though. The closer I got to Newry the more trash I saw along the lake. When I first paddled through here I thought this had been where fishing spots had been trashed. On this trip I could see that these were actually illegal dumps. It was as if the villagers decided to push their trash down toward the river and out of sight. There were a couple of lovely waterfalls back in small coves, but the view was ruined by tires and other trash. In fact, I lost count of the number of tires along the bank and down in the water itself. The really sad thing is that some of this trash looked fairly modern, as if the illegal dumping is still going on.

As I got closer to the village there were more and more houses along the lake. Some of these were nice lake houses, but not ostentatious. One spot looked like they had ALL the toys – multiple jet skis, pontoons, kayaks, paddle boards, and ATVs. At first I thought it was a rental place, but it looks more like an extended family hangout.

Around the bend the village came into view. One cove was lined with mill houses. A heron was hanging out on a deadfall.

The initial view of the mill was obscured. There was a new apartment construction right at the water’s edge in the style of the old mill. However, just before that was a very trashy encampment. I couldn’t tell if it was a permanent home for someone, or just someone’s lake hangout. It almost looked like it was on the same property as the new apartments.

The new apartments stood in stark contrast with the encampment. It seemed to me that the developers had squandered an opportunity, though. It didn’t look like any attempt had been made to take advantage of access to the water. While there were large windows in the building, I would have added balconies so that you could enjoy the view.

I reached the old Little River Dam that had supplied power to the mill. Next to the dam on the bank opposite the apartments was yet another illegal dump.

Maybe the developers don’t want to provide access to the water. I certainly wouldn’t want to swim here with that much garbage.

I started making my way back. Along the way I explored a couple of the coves I had bypassed on my way to the village. Once I made it over the old tires I found one really nice waterfall.

I also spotted the remains of an old still along the way.

It didn’t take long to get back to my starting point. The trip out and back from Lawrence Bridge was 7.3 miles.

Continued on the next page…