Honea Path grew from a frontier settlement with roots in Native American trade routes and later Cherokee and Creek exchange with Europeans, and its unusual name has been linked either to settler William Honey, who bought 200 acres northeast of town in 1788, or to a Cherokee trading path between the Saluda and Savannah Rivers; former residents recalled Cherokee people returning to care for ancestral burial sites as late as 1855, and the town's earliest name was Honey Path. Early European-American settlement included David Greer, who came from Ireland in 1794, Obediah and Jennie Shirley, who built a simple log plantation house around 1830, and M.E. Erwin, who established a farm in 1848 and built a mill for grinding corn and flour. Honea Path's development in textile and agricultural industries depended heavily on two rail lines, the first laid through town in 1855 and the second arriving in 1911, which helped shift local residents from largely subsistence farming toward cotton cultivation and brought mail, merchandise, crop shipment, and visitors. The Chiquola Mill and nearby mill village became the town's most prominent landmark, notable for remaining in operation since opening, for a tragic 1934 conflict between mill employees and owners, and for highly competitive baseball teams. Small-town life was remembered through places and routines such as train-time fellowship, local stores, churches, schools, peddlers, a public cannery, boarding houses, and Coleman Field park, while historic sites including the Obediah and Jennie Shirley House and the Jennie Erwin Carnegie Library reflected continuing efforts to preserve the town's past.