By Margaret N. O'Shea South Carolina Bureau When biologist Frankie Arnold Brooks walks the vast Savannah River Site, watching out for endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers and bald eagles, she sometimes finds her way home. A younger sister, Aiken artist Trish Arnold, was a small child when Dunbarton was dismantled and everything she knew disappeared.
Former residents remember feeling a strong sense of community.
The Arnold children went to school there and roller-skated on the sidewalks. At the old farm site, where the Arnold children went barefoot, drank from the streams and teetered on homemade seesaws, the red, rambling roses that Iona Arnold planted still spread every spring. The old well remains, and the foundations of the house, half a century later, hold up empty air. Trish Arnold visited the former site of Dunbarton a few years ago and was surprised by what remained. She found she could look toward the ends of the empty drives and recall by name who lived where.