Aiken has been “discovered” three times, and each group has left a lasting and productive legacy in this remarkably beautiful small Southern city.

First, the wealthy families of plantation society in the Antebellum South came in the summer to escape the ravages of coastal malaria.

They were followed half a century later by the Northern families and fortunes who built the Industrial Revolution in America, and who made Aiken their winter equestrian resort.

Then, the last half of the 20th century brought another revolution in the form of a giant Cold War nuclear site near Aiken, which brought thousands of highly-educated engineers from all across the country.

Those three distinct groups – the Old South, the Winter Colony and the soldiers of science – have found ways to work and play together in an easy alliance that makes Aiken like no other place.

The town still takes much of its image from sports played on horseback, gets much of its drive from the highly-educated people of science who have made Aiken home, and gains much of its charm and civility from the easygoing accommodation honed for 165 years from its small-town Southern roots.

As it has for generations, Aiken embraces the best of southern and American culture while reaching out to the rest of the world.