This is the ugliest place in SC, national travel website says. Do you agree?

Name the ugliest city in South Carolina.

Perhaps several came to mind instantly.

The folks at Alot Travel have their own ideas. Based on online reviews of various travel sites, Alot chose one ugly city from each state.

South Carolina’s is not actually a city, but an unincorporated community.

It’s Watts Mills in Laurens County. Suffice it to say, that since the textile mill closed, there’s not a lot of there, there.

A drug store, a garden center, a church, an elementary school and lots of mill houses. Some are in good repair, others not so much.

Watts Mill was named for the cotton mill built there in 1902, during the height of the Upstate textile boom. It cost $300,000 (about $10 million today.)

The Spartanburg Herald Journal reported in 1903, “The location would be hard to beat. It is a plateau midway between the C.N.&L. and the C.&W.C. railways, and is a portion of a 257-acre tract originally owned by Mr. John B. Watts, deceased, and was conveyed to the Watts Mills Co. by Mr. J. Dunk Watts, who until recently resided at the old homestead and operated successfully one of the finest farms around here.”

In all, 130 homes were built for workers, and later, a school and five-room houses for the bosses.

“They have in their own village many modern advantages including electrically lighted homes,” according to a post on the University of North Carolina’s Documenting the American South website.

They had a 21-piece band and a savings bank, the publication said.

By the 1930s, production shifted to synthetics and during World War II parachute fabric was made there.

A bronze marker at the Laurens County Courthouse honors 17 Watts Mill men who died in the war. In all, 407 served, the marker says.

And then, as was the case in many small southern towns, the mill closed, sending people elsewhere. Wattsville, as the community is known, languished. What exists now are ruins of the mill in the center of the community.

A woman who answered the phone at Wattsville Drugs said, “I don’t think it’s the cutest,” adding that no one who works there lives in Wattsville.

Alot Travel had this to say, “Out of all the cities on this list, Watts Mills has some of the most potential for recreational activities and natural beauty,” citing nearby lakes and streams.

“When you actually go into the city center, it looks like a ghost town in a horror movie,” the website said.

A quarter of the 1,900 residents live below the poverty line, according to the U.S. Census. Per capita income is $12,500, half of the state’s average.

Residents could take heart, though, because also on Alot’s ugly list is Laurel, Mississippi, the home of the popular Home Town series on HGTV that features Erin and Ben Napier fixing up houses for a host of newcomers and others. Its sixth season is coming later this year.

Alot also lists Bakersfield, California, which by the way is on a lot of ugly lists, along with Detroit and Reno. Dunn, North Carolina, near Fayetteville; and Eastman, Georgia, southeast of Macon, made the ugly list as well.