In the center of Historic Pendleton, the building now housing the Pendleton District Commission was constructed in 1850 as a general store for Jesse Lewis. The business entered the Hunter family in 1870 as Hunter and Long, and after James Hunter gained full control it passed through several generations of Hunter ownership and became known simply as Hunter's Store. It sold a wide range of goods, including shoes, clothing, local produce, flour, coffee, farm tools, and chicken feed. In 1929 a new building was constructed next door and opened that year as the new Hunter's Store, while the 1850 building was used for storage and workspace until the store ceased operation in 1962. In 1968 the Tri-County Pendleton District Commission bought the old general store and has used it as headquarters, including a Local and Family History archives. The Commission installed the first plumbing and electricity in the building, but otherwise few changes have been made, and it retains its original exterior appearance, wide board flooring, and hooks in the high ceiling. Hunter's Store was a landmark business in Pendleton. For years, Commission staff members heard footsteps and noises from the second floor, and Hunter descendants affirmed a local story that the building was haunted. According to that story, in the 1890s the present-day library room served as a caretaker's apartment, and a local man who had fallen from his horse into nearby Eighteen Mile Creek was pulled out, put to bed there in his wet clothes, and found dead the next morning after a sudden cold snap dropped the spring temperature below freezing. In the fall of 1970, the entire town of Pendleton plus a small area extending into Pickens County was named to the National Register of Historic Places. Its 6,316 acres make it one of the largest historic districts in the nation, with more than forty individually recognized historic structures and sites within its boundaries, most dating before 1865.