Oconee County, South Carolina

Oconee County is a county in South Carolina, United States, in the state’s northwest corner
where South Carolina, Georgia and North Carolina meet. It had a population of 78,607 at the 2020
census, an estimated 83,775 by 2025, and covers 673.57 square miles (1,744.5 km2) centred near
34°45′N 83°04′W.

Walhalla is the county seat; its postal code is 29691. Seneca is the county’s largest city. The
county holds 3 cities, 2 incorporated towns and 8 census-designated places, and it runs on
Eastern Time. Its FIPS code is 45073. South Carolina has no civil township government, so places
here are not grouped by township.

Towns & Villages in Oconee County

Oconee County has 13 named places on record: 5 incorporated cities and towns and 8
census-designated places (CDPs) with no local government of their own. This replaces an earlier
list of roughly 150 entries that mixed real places with private lake-community subdivisions and
neighborhood names — Bent Tree, Keowee Shores and Chickasaw Point’s own internal streets
among them — that the Census Bureau does not recognize as places.

Fair Play’s CDP boundary crosses into neighboring Anderson County; its 704 residents are
counted for the whole CDP, not just the Oconee County portion. Utica shares Seneca’s 29678 ZIP
rather than having a separate post office of its own.

ZIP Codes

• 29691 — Walhalla
• 29672 — Seneca
• 29678 — Seneca (also serves Utica)
• 29679 — Seneca (post office box ZIP)
• 29693 — Westminster
• 29696 — West Union
• 29676 — Salem
• 29643 — Fair Play

Keowee Key, Chickasaw Point, South Union, Newry, Longcreek and Tamassee have no ZIP code of
their own; mail there is delivered under the nearest incorporated town’s code.

Geography

Oconee County sits in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, South Carolina’s westernmost
county. Of its 673.57 square miles, 626.56 are land and 47.01 are water, about 7.0 percent —
high for the state, the result of three large reservoirs built across the county’s rivers in the
20th century: Lake Hartwell, Lake Keowee and Lake Jocassee. The Savannah, Keowee, Chattooga and
Little rivers all run through the county, and Sumter National Forest and the Ellicott Rock
Wilderness cover much of its mountainous northwest corner.

Pickens County borders Oconee to the east and Anderson County to the southeast; both are on
this site. Jackson County and Transylvania County, North Carolina lie to the north, and
Habersham, Rabun, Hart, Franklin and Stephens counties in Georgia lie across the Savannah and
Chattooga rivers to the south and west. Pickens County and
Anderson County both
border Oconee directly.

Demographics

Oconee County had a population of 78,607 at the 2020 census, and the latest estimate puts the
county near 83,775 residents. Seneca and Walhalla are the two largest incorporated communities,
though Keowee Key, an unincorporated lake-community CDP, outranks Walhalla’s own city population
at 2,716. Median household income is $62,388, according to Data USA’s most recent estimate,
below South Carolina’s statewide 2023 ACS figure of $67,804. Population density works out to
about 125 people per square mile of land, low even by South Carolina standards, reflecting the
county’s mountainous terrain and large lake acreage.

Economy & Local Life

Manufacturing employs the most workers in the county, about 5,657 people, followed by health
care and social assistance at 4,249 and retail trade at 3,294. Duke Energy’s Oconee Nuclear
Station, on Lake Keowee near Seneca, generates more than 2,500 megawatts across three reactor
units and is one of the county’s largest single employers. Textile mills once dominated the
local economy — Newry, on the Little River, was built as a company mill village in 1893 and
ran until 1975 — but that industry has since closed, and the county’s lakes now drive a
recreation and retirement economy tied partly to nearby Clemson University, about 16 miles from
Walhalla. Walhalla’s Oktoberfest, held each October, celebrates the town’s German founding and
draws visitors well beyond the county.

History

South Carolina’s legislature organized Oconee County in 1868, carving it out of the old
Pickens District after the Civil War. The name comes from a historic Cherokee town and the word
Ae-quo-nee, meaning land beside the water — a fitting name for a county now covered by three
reservoirs. Walhalla was founded earlier, in 1848–49, when the German Colonization Society
of Charleston settled political refugees on land bought from Reverend Joseph Grisham; the
colonists named it Valhalla for the Norse afterlife, later anglicized to Walhalla.

Land beneath what are now Lake Hartwell, Lake Keowee and Lake Jocassee was farmland and small
communities before the Army Corps of Engineers and Duke Power flooded the valleys between the
1950s and the early 1970s to build the dams and, later, the Oconee Nuclear Station. The floods
displaced longtime residents and submerged roads, farms and cemeteries along the Keowee and
Whitewater rivers.

Getting There

Interstate 85 enters South Carolina from Georgia at the county’s southern tip, near the
Vandiver Bridge crossing of the Savannah River, before continuing on into Anderson County. US 76
and US 123 cross the county, along with SC 11 (the Cherokee Foothills National Scenic Highway),
SC 24, SC 28 and several shorter state routes.

• Clemson — about 16 miles southeast
• Anderson — about 30 miles southeast
• Greenville — about 45 miles east
• Toccoa, Georgia — about 25 miles south

Greenville–Spartanburg International Airport, roughly 45 miles east of Seneca, is the
nearest major commercial airport. Amtrak’s Crescent line stops at the Clemson station, about 16
miles southeast of Walhalla, connecting to Atlanta and Charlotte.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Oconee County located?
It sits in South Carolina’s northwest corner, in the Blue Ridge foothills where South Carolina,
Georgia and North Carolina meet, bordered by Pickens and Anderson counties on the South Carolina
side.

What is the population of Oconee County?
78,607 at the 2020 census, with a 2025 estimate near 83,775.

How big is Oconee County?
673.57 square miles (1,744.5 km2), of which 626.56 square miles are land.

What is the county seat of Oconee County?
Walhalla, founded by German colonists in 1848–49, is the county seat; Seneca is the
county’s largest city.

How many towns and cities are in Oconee County?
Five incorporated places — Seneca, Walhalla, Westminster, West Union and Salem —
plus eight census-designated places: Keowee Key, Utica, Chickasaw Point, Fair Play, South Union,
Newry, Longcreek and Tamassee.

What ZIP codes does Oconee County use?
29691 for Walhalla; 29672, 29678 and 29679 for Seneca and Utica; 29693 for Westminster; 29696
for West Union; 29676 for Salem; and 29643 for Fair Play.

What is Oconee County known for?
Its three reservoirs — Lake Hartwell, Lake Keowee and Lake Jocassee — Duke Energy’s
Oconee Nuclear Station, and Walhalla’s German-heritage Oktoberfest each October.

More counties in this state: Towns and villages in South Carolina.