HISTORY
Aiken, South Carolina’s rich history dates back to the 1830s when William Aiken, president of the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company and one of South Carolina’s leading cotton merchants, hired Horatio Allen, a distinguished engineer who would later build the Brooklyn Bridge, to construct a railroad from Charleston to Hamburg, South Carolina. Work began in 1830 and on October 2, 1833, the first train arrived in the newly established town of Aiken, named in honor of the first railroad president.