Could mountain bike park, country festival turn a SC county into an outdoor destination?
The rain has ceased, but the mist still clings to the hills outside Winnsboro.
Riding around on an ATV, giving a midday tour of the new Rattlesnake Bike Park, a downhill mountain biking attraction with 14 trails and shuttle service that promises to bring a premiere outdoor recreation draw to rural Fairfield County, two members of the attraction’s team lament that the weather for this visit isn’t ideal.
But the conditions on this November weekday, along with the peaking fall foliage and sharply rolling hills, appropriately make the setting feel more like mountainous western North Carolina than a spot in the South Carolina Midlands that sits roughly midway between Columbia and Charlotte. Finding a location like this so close to two growing metropolitan areas is key to their business strategy.
“There’s some phenomenal facilities out there, but most of them are pretty far from population centers,” said Jason Murphy, the development partner in Rattlesnake Bike Park who came up with the idea.
And while there isn’t much topography in the region that would make such an attraction possible, he said the “one little wrinkle” of elevation that goes between Interstate 20 and Lake Wateree gave them what they needed.
“I think we’ve got a unique opportunity here, being so close to Charlotte and Columbia,” Murphy continued. “There are so many people that went out, bought a mountain bike and ride it on the greenway or on their local trail system, and they’re not really putting it through its paces and what it can actually handle. And they also have no idea that places like this exist. It’s a big ask to drive two and a half hours to try something you’ve never done before. But to drive 30 minutes or 45 minutes? I think we can introduce the sport to a lot of people.”
Rattlesnake promises to be a significant addition, both to outdoor recreation offerings in the Carolinas and the economy of Fairfield County, which has a population of roughly 20,500 just north of the state capital of Columbia (nearly 142,500) and Richland County (about 425,000).
But the county is home to an increasing bounty of outdoor entertainment options, including a 2025 festival set to feature some of country music’s hottest artists and a 2,600-acre park for all-terain vehicles that is Rattlesnake’s next-door neighbor.
This uptick could allow the oft-overlooked county to establish itself as a destination for outdoor enthusiasts.
“Anything that is outdoor recreational-related is something that we’re very big on,” said Dillon Pullen, president and CEO of the Fairfield County Chamber of Commerce. “Those outdoor recreational activities, no matter what they look like, are a huge tourism draw for us. As we build tourism and the county is investing heavily in tourism this year, over the past year, really, this is perfect for us to have a cohesive marketing brand versus 10 attractions who don’t relate to one another.”
Building an identity
The large ATV park that borders Rattlesnake is Carolina Adventure World, which opened in 2007 and offers more than 120 miles of trails.
It is also set to host the Field & Stream Music Festival, a big-time country music event that was set to bring acts such as Eric Church, Lainey Wilson, ZZ Top, Shaboozey, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Riley Green and Bailey Zimmerman in October before being postponed to 2025 by Hurricane Helene. Organizers say most of the lineup is coming back for the rescheduled date next fall, confirming that Eric Church will serve as an anchor.
All of this is in addition to Lake Wateree and its state park, which runs along the county’s eastern border, Lake Monticello and a nearby trailhead for the central Peak to Prosperity passage of the S.C.-spanning Palmetto Trail, and whitewater runs recently installed by Duke Energy just across the Chester County line in Great Falls.
Local leaders hope to seize the opportunity presented by this array of amenities by marketing the area to outdoor enthusiasts, Pullen said.
“We’re investing very heavily in tourism to drive them here to Fairfield County and to share some of the treasures, the hidden treasures, if you will, that we have to offer,” he added.
Those investments into local tourism include the county providing funding to the chamber as it moved into a new office earlier this year to establish the area’s first official visitors center and to hire a dedicated tourism director.
And the commitment continues: The 2024-2025 budget the county passed in June includes nearly $250,000 in accommodations tax funds directed toward efforts to boost tourism.
An outdoors hub on Camp Welfare Road
The subject of an ongoing replacement project, the bridge crossing Big Wateree Creek and connecting I-77 to the Rattlesnake Bike Park was under construction for 103 days. It reopened in September.
It’s good that the bridge is back online, Rattlesnake’s Murphy said, as the winding two-lane Camp Welfare Road is likely to see more traffic in the near future.
Heading into next year, the park plans to juice its attendance with demonstrations from equipment providers as well as competitions, adding to what the team hopes will be a strong regular draw.
But Murphy is bullish on the area beyond his confidence that Rattlesnake will be a success.
“The fact that you have an outdoor recreation facility right next door [in Carolina Adventure World], there’s a decent amount of crossover,” he said, praising the way the county has leaned into its burgeoning outdoors identity and looking forward to the additional boost that Field & Stream Music Festival will bring. The area could become a true hub for outdoors enthusiasts, Murphy added.
“It’s a beautiful part of the state, and it’s so convenient to two major cities, but you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere,” he said.
Southern Entertainment, the production company that partnered with the outdoors website Field & Stream for the county’s upcoming music festival, sees similar potential in the area. The company is no stranger to putting on big festivals, already mustering events such as Myrtle Beach’s Carolina Country Music Festival and New Jersey’s Barefoot Country Music Festival.
“Being from the Charlotte area, we love this area of the country, and we think South Carolina is just really special,” said Southern Entertainment co-founder Bob Durkin, noting that on top of the area’s growing number of attractions and the proximity to Charlotte, recent industrial additions like the Gallo Winery production facility in neighboring Chester County helped convince his team that Fairfield County is a place where their new festival can thrive.
“There’s already a lot of, sort of eco tourism and people coming to that area,” Durkin said.
And the outdoor activities Fairfield County is becoming known for will be a big part of the festival.
“For this festival, you’ll be able to have hiking, fishing, archery, all sorts of outdoor activities that I’ve never seen at another music festival,” Durkin said. “So the fact that it’s going to celebrate everything outdoors with the best music in the world, I think that’s really kind of special.”
Bike park ramps up
During The State’s recent visit, Murphy excitedly pointed out some of his favorite features along the trails at Rattlesnake Bike Park. He started mountain biking back in the ‘80s and ‘90s in New England but got out of it when he moved to the coast. He got back into it a couple decades later when he moved to North Carolina, and after visiting other shuttle-assisted downhill parks, he set his sights on building one close to home.
With Rattlesnake, he feels he has a park that can stand with the best of these facilities.
The property boasts 14 trails twisting through the hills, designed by Asheville ,N.C.-based Elevated Trail Design. They’re dotted with features like high-hanging rocks to ramp off, lines of smaller jumps to bounce atop, and jumps with walls for riders to touch with their tires and bounce back to the dirt path below. Rattlesnake has shuttle service up to the trails and a lodge at the summit where riders and observers can hang out and get grub from rotating local food trucks on the weekends.
There’s also plans for a campground on site, and Murphy notes that they have access to about 300 acres and have already flagged off several more trails if business picks up like they hope. They’re already off to a strong start, selling out of the roughly 350 passes available for their opening weekend in November.
He wants Rattlesnake to be a place where beginners and experienced riders alike can come get their thrills.
“One of the design principles we had was that this had to be a place where you couldn’t top out in your skills, meaning the leap between difficulty levels had to be incremental,” Murphy said. “So that you don’t get to a point where you might be able to handle the most difficult blue [trail] but the easiest black diamond, it’s just too much of a leap that you have to go somewhere else to make that leap.”
This story was originally published December 4, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
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