Beloved SC BBQ restaurant destroyed in Christmas fire
The Lone Star BBQ and Mercantile in Santee has been a local favorite and a traveler’s destination for more than 20 years. On Christmas, it burned mostly to the ground.
The restaurant and mercantile was made up of four old-timey country buildings, each more than a century old. The shops were built between the 1890s and 1920s and spent most of their lives as businesses in the small railroad town of Lone Star, South Carolina.
Lone Star was nearly abandoned by the end of World War II, but a handful of stores kept running until the late 1990s. When Lone Star’s Zeagler’s General Store closed in 1997, local real estate agent Pat Williams saw an opportunity, according to past coverage by multiple news outlets.
Williams moved four of Lone Star’s rustic, empty buildings to Santee in 2000 and created Lone Star BBQ and Mercantile, using the charm of the historic buildings to create a unique dining experience. Williams ran the restaurant for 20 years with his son before selling the business several years ago.
Cory and Rachel Henderson purchased the restaurant three years ago.
“It’s just devastating. We had so many hopes and dreams and now it’s, as you can see, what it is,” Rachel Henderson told The Times and Democrat newspaper after the Christmas fire, as she looked upon the charred interior of her store.
The Santee Fire Service District received a call about a structure fire late Christmas day, Fire Chief Ed Barnett told the local news.
By the time trucks arrived at the scene, one building was already engulfed in flames, and the blaze was as high as some trees, Barnett said.
No one was injured in the fire, Barnett added. The cause has not been publicly released.
