Built in 1957, the Saluda County Stockyard and Livestock Market provided a livestock market for more than two generations of farmers. Ralph T. McClendon and Georgia Senator Sam McGill opened this ultra-modern auction barn in Saluda. A newspaper article called it the most modern auction house of its kind in the country, noting that it was air conditioned, gas heated, equipped with theater seats, and contained a cafe, with comfort in mind for both sellers and buyers, who came from all over the South and from northern and Midwestern states. Later, D.C. Herlong became a partner in the business. In 1999 the owners leased the property. Today Buddy Coleman, son of the first barn manager and grandson of Blind Ben Coleman, who unloaded the first cow into the facility, is the sole operator of the business, which remains a livestock market and one of only seven in South Carolina.