Ware Shoals is a town in Abbeville, Greenwood, and Laurens counties in the U.S. state of South Carolina, along the Saluda River.

Ware Shoals, like much of the United States, has a constrictive population pyramid, the result of declining birth rates and increasing life expectancy.

Senator Nathaniel Barksdale Dial of Laurens County envisioned the possibility of damming this river to power a cotton mill.

[14] From 1904 to 1916, the population of Ware Shoals grew from two men employed to maintain the newly constructed power plant to 2,000.

The mill employed the school's eight teachers and required many of its employees and their children to attend classes.

[14] Benjamin Riegel helped organize the town's first church when he brought a Presbyterian preacher, Rev.

Katherine Hall at various times housed or hosted a movie theater, the community library, a Masonic Lodge, a pool hall, a teen canteen as well as showers and dressing rooms for the adjacent public swimming pool.

There was a soda fountain where the community members socialized, toy department, pharmacy, candy counter, men's shop, ladies' ready-to-wear section, furniture department, bargain basement, grocery store, and cloth shop.

In 1954, the stadium hosted an exhibition game between the Cincinnati Red Legs and The Washington Senators.

In 1939 muralist Alice Kindler was commissioned by the WPA to complete a mural for the local post office.

The WPA was a New Deal agency that employed individuals to carry out public works projects.

[16]Beginning in the 1940s, "The Big Friendly" began an early shopper loyalty program by conducting a drawing just before Christmas to award an automobile to one lucky patron.

"The Big Friendly" remained a central part of life in Ware Shoals until its closing in 1963.

The Emma Maddox Building of the current Ware Shoals Middle School was named in her honor, in recognition of her contributions to the educational, spiritual and civic lives of African Americans in the greater Ware Shoal's area.