Jones had reached the part of the outing he could no longer put off. Most of the party, including a little girl, had already gone up. From above, they encouraged him to follow. Gaston came down to persuade the two remaining visitors, and the woman finally offered Jones a bargain: if he would go, she would go too. He asked the guide to take her first. Then Gaston returned for him, leaving no one else to hide behind.

That is how a short article in the September 6, 1860, Yorkville Enquirer brings Table Rock’s early tourism within reach. The attraction was the mountain, but the memorable part was the visitor struggling to climb it. Wooden steps, a patient guide, and the pressure of being the last person below made a story worth sending to a friend and, eventually, printing for newspaper readers.

A nervous visitor, preserved in a newspaper

The article, titled “Ascending Table Rock,” begins with its writer remembering an earlier climb by the old steps. The writer then introduces a letter from Jones, who visited that summer and answered a friend’s doubts about whether he would actually make the ascent. September 6 is the publication date. The paper does not give the date Jones climbed.

Before approaching the steps, his party had visited the mountain’s base and a place called Silver-Leaf Pool. The name survives clearly in the newspaper, a small trace of the landscape visitors knew in 1860. The account then follows the party back toward the path, where the steep climb turned an agreeable excursion into a test of nerve.

Jones told the story with considerable humor. As he began climbing, his fear became an extraordinary fondness for the steps themselves. He described embracing them and clinging to them, turning a practical grip into a comic declaration of attachment. He also made a biblical joke about not looking back. The reader is meant to enjoy his performance while also understanding his fright.

Eventually, he reached the top. His embarrassment gave way to delight, and he declared the experience worth the trembling and perspiration. The writer closed with a brief celebration of his success. It is an entertaining personal account, and its lasting appeal comes from a feeling many mountain visitors still recognize: the view may be wonderful, but first you have to persuade yourself to keep going.

The wooden steps were part of a real visitor route

The staircase behind the joke is well documented. The National Register nomination for Table Rock State Park Historic District records an 1832 lease from John Masters to William Sutherland authorizing steps at the mountain’s northeastern end. It describes wooden sections fixed to iron pins or spikes set in drilled rock and attributes construction to Sutherland’s employee Daniel Carrol. An 1842 visitor, T. Addison Richards, counted about 130 steps and described a banister. The nomination leaves the precise construction date unresolved; the state historical marker places two 150-foot flights in the 1830s. These structures were designed to help visitors navigate steep rock, decades before the CCC developed the park.

That history gives Jones’s story a physical setting. He was confronting a built route that made difficult terrain accessible to visitors, while still leaving the height and exposure very much in evidence. The description of a little girl going ahead of him adds to the comedy, but it also shows that this was an organized group excursion. People with different levels of confidence were using the same approach, with a guide moving between them.

It would be a mistake to read every nineteenth-century description of the steps as a technical inspection. Richards’s favorable assessment in 1842 and the newspaper writer’s 1860 description of them as rickety come from different moments and different voices. The sources firmly establish that the stairway existed, visitors used it, and the climb left an impression strong enough to put into print.

Gaston did the work that made the outing possible

The newspaper introduces Gaston as one of the Table Mountain guides. Throughout the story, he keeps moving: down to encourage hesitant visitors, up with the woman, and back down to accompany Jones. When Jones finally starts, Gaston is behind him. The visitor supplies the comic anxiety, but the guide supplies the repeated practical help that carries the episode forward.

His role makes this more than a story about an old staircase. Tourism depended on people who knew the mountain and could help others negotiate it. The newspaper gives Gaston no biography, yet it records specific actions. He recognized the visitors’ reluctance, returned to them, and accompanied each of them upward. Those details preserve a working guide’s contribution in a story largely devoted to a tourist’s feelings.

The paper calls him “Old Gaston,” but supplies no full name or age. His work is the useful fact here. It places a named guide alongside the hotels, roads, and other services that brought visitors to Table Rock, reminding us that an excursion required local knowledge as well as a destination worth seeing.

Eleven years later, another party found the steps unsafe

A second account brings the story forward to July 1871. Transcribed from the Glen Collection by G. Anne Sheriff and published in the November 2019 Old Pendleton District Messenger, it describes a group traveling from Pendleton to Table Rock and Caesars Head. At Table Rock, they stayed with Mr. Keith, the hotel keeper, and climbed by a rough trail because the steps were considered unsafe. A guide named Gaston led their exploration above. One version says some visitors tried the steps anyway, although Gaston would not use them himself.

The newsletter prints two versions of that excursion account, so they represent one trip rather than two separate visits. Both preserve a valuable contrast with the 1860 newspaper: a guide named Gaston still appears in the mountain’s visitor story, but the party approaches the steps with an explicit warning about their condition. Without fuller identifying details, the accounts do not establish that both guides were the same man. They do show the name recurring in the same work at Table Rock eleven years apart.

The later episode gives the old staircase a more complete history than Jones’s successful climb alone. A structure could open a route to visitors and later become the part of the outing a guide declined to use. The 1871 party’s rough alternative trail also shows that reaching the mountain’s upper ground did not depend entirely on that stairway.

A mountain outing before Table Rock State Park

The hotel belongs in this story as part of the visitor network rather than as a destination Jones is known to have used. His newspaper account does not name his lodging. The 1871 travelers, however, specifically identify their hotel keeper, connecting a day on the mountain with the business of accommodating a visiting party. Our history of the lost Table Rock Hotel explores the resort that served mountain travelers in an earlier era.

The surviving accounts give different pieces of an excursion: a place to stay, a party to climb with, a guide, a path, and a difficult passage near the top. Their human details keep the history from becoming only a list of construction dates. Jones’s nervousness and Gaston’s repeated trips up and down tell us how visitors experienced the place and how someone else helped make that experience possible.

They also give the mountain a history that reaches beyond today’s familiar park landscape. Table Rock was already a destination for organized pleasure trips long before modern visitor facilities. The 1860 newspaper captures one of those trips as its most reluctant participant decides whether the promise above is worth the climb below.

Seeing Table Rock today

Today’s designated hiking routes offer the appropriate way to explore the mountain. The official park trail guide lists Table Rock Trail as 3.6 miles one way and rates it very strenuous. For a complete comparison of routes and distances, use our Table Rock State Park trail guide. The historical staircase is part of the mountain’s past, not a route to seek out or follow.

You can also enjoy the mountain without climbing to the summit. Our guide to the best places to view Table Rock includes ways to appreciate its shape and scale from below. After reading Jones’s account, that familiar view takes on another layer: somewhere on the rock, visitors once gripped wooden steps while a guide helped them find their confidence.

Jones reached the top, and his relief survived because he made a good story of it. Gaston survives in the record through his help in getting him there. Together, they give an otherwise distant mountain outing its human scale: one visitor trying not to look down, and one guide returning to help him up.

Sources and further reading

The principal source is “Ascending Table Rock,” Yorkville Enquirer, September 6, 1860, page 2. The newspaper presents Jones’s experience through an excerpt from his letter; the original printed page was inspected. The climb occurred during the summer described in the item, not necessarily on its publication date. A full-page newspaper PDF is available through the University of South Carolina Libraries collection.

Stairway context comes from Table Rock State Park Historic District, National Register nomination, prepared in 1989, especially Section 8, page 4 and notes 12–14, and South Carolina historical marker 39-26. The July 1871 excursion is reproduced on printed pages 6–8 of the November 2019 Old Pendleton District Messenger. Current hiking and access information comes from South Carolina State Parks.