My sector of research went into uncovering the history of the corridor. The study area although very old was not very rich in history and the history that did exist was somewhat hard to uncover. The corridor is very heavily traffic and the end toward the Mall is very heavily commercialized. Moving away from the mall the land goes quickly from retail and commercial to heavy residential. There are several neighborhoods that lay in this corridor however most of the Cox Creek Parkway road frontage is still open through this area.
I began by traveling my corridor on several occasions. It took several trips before I began to see the corridor through the geographic eye. I immediately began to think about the things that I had seen being built in my lifetime and ruled them out first. Then I started to think about the things that I thought had been there prior to my lifetime and also tried to think back to things that I had heard my parents talk about. I also narrowed my surveying to local historians and old establishments along the corridor.
I started the research aspect of my project by first trying to find out what was there. I went to the agriculture department and obtained several different aerial photographs. The first photo that I analyzed was a photo from 1949. In this photo it was clear to see that there were only a couple of features there that were currently. The first being Mars Hill Bible School and the second being the Rolling Acres Stock Farm. For the most part the rest of the corridor was pastureland with a few residences. The next photo that I analyzed was a mid 1960�s photo, there really wasn�t much change other than the resident population appeared to have grown quite a bit. From here I went to a 1978 aerial photo, there was a drastic change over this 12 to 15 year period. This photograph showed a large road and the mall for starters, and the resident population had really taken off. From here there was a large time period gap, as the next photo did not come until 1992. In 1992 the corridor on the end closest to Florence Blvd. had literary exploded. There was an enormous economic expansion in the retail and on the wholesale level. This was due in large part to the mall opening.
The next step in this analytical process was to use the information that was found in the photo and determine the best places to begin my survey. The first location of interest was Mars Hill Bible School. I visited and took pictures and also talked with many alumni to help me gain a better understanding of the background of this facility. T.D. Larimore founded Mars Hill in the late 1880�s as a Christian boarding school. This lasted until his passing in the late 1930�s, Mars Hill then closed until 1947 when Mr. Larimore�s heirs reopened it as a Christian co-ed school.
The next major establishment takes us to the other end of the parkway closest to Highway 72; the First Baptist Church of Florence was relocated to this location in 1964. This church owned a large parcel of land that was bordered on one side by highway 72 and eventual on another side by Cox Creek Parkway. In 1974 the church established a Christian school on its property and in the passing years as property values have risen, sold much of the remaining properties for commercial uses.
My next area of study was to find out how the property values had change through the years and to especially focus on how the land value increased or decreased with the addition of the Cox Creek Parkway and again with the addition of the mall. I first want to give a brief background on the Cox Creek Parkway and some dates of interest. The Cox Creek Parkway was constructed by the city of Florence in 1970 as a trucking bypass from Highway 72 to Highway 20 in order cut down the flow of heavy industrial traffic thru the CBD of Florence. The land values in the area before the parkway were relative to all the other similar properties in this area. After the parkway, however property values remained the same and possibly may have even declined a little as a result of the bypass and its heavy industrial traffic.
1974 the shape of Cox Creek Parkway began to change as a gentleman from New Jersey approach the city of Florence with a plan to construct a large indoor shopping facility. His plan took 2 years to get off the ground and another 2 years for the actual construction of the shopping facility. During this 2 year span the parkway had to be rezoned from bypass residential to commercial residential, once this was done Cox Creek Parkway quickly transformed from old farmland into a commercial Mecca for all types of retail shopping. The property value after 1978 along the corridor did not change immediately but has more than doubled every ten years since.
To conclude my historical research I began to take the information that I gathered, and assembled and organized it. I found that there was not much change in this area from the early 1900�s until the construction of Cox Creek Parkway and again a significant change was noticed in 1978 with addition of the mall. From here a steady growth and development has occurred even until the present.
