Lexington

Granby was among the first important trading posts in the South Carolina interior. The town originated as a large Indian village on Congaree Creek.

While now the setting for state, county, and municipal governments, it took shape in the wilderness near the geographic center of South Carolina, thus answering the demands of the populous upcountry for an administrative authority more “Centrical” than far-off Charleston.

This Union campaign is one of the most controversial of the Civil War because of the damage it wrought to civilian property and the questions it raised about fair play in war.

The rapid expansion of the Columbia metropolitan area in the final decades of the twentieth century made Lexington one of the fastest-growing counties in the state. The county’s population more than tripled between 1960 and 2000, with most of the growth taking place in the Columbia suburbs of West Columbia, Cayce, and Irmo.