Denmark
Railroads were the engine driving the City of Denmark's early
development. When the first railroad from Charleston to Hamburg was
built in the early 1830s, it ran through a town that then was known as
Capt. Z.G. Graham's Turnout, named in honor of the man who'd sold the
railroad 17 acres on which to build a station and turnout.
A later railroad, running from Columbia to Savannah, crossed the town
and brought continued growth. The town was incorporated as Graham's in
1870, and it became Denmark in 1891. The name was in honor of Col.
Isadore Denmark of the Southbound Construction Co,. Yet another
railroad came through in 1893, and officials created East Denmark in
the older sections of town and West Denmark in the new.
The community grew steadily in its early years. Ghent's Branch Baptist
was built in 1834. Sometime after the Civil War, the first school
building went up. Voorhees Normal & Industrial School – the
predecessor of Voorhees College – began 1897. The brick 30-room Booker
T. Washington Hospital, also the gift of New Jersey philanthropist
Ralph Voorhees of Clinton, NJ, was completed in 1904. An adjacent
administration building was completed in 1916. The old hospital now
houses the offices of the college president.