"C" is for Camp, Wofford Benjamin [1894–1986]. Agriculturalist, entrepreneur. Bill Camp, a native of Cherokee County, studied agronomy at Clemson—specializing in cotton breeding. In 1917 he joined the US Department of Agriculture's Cotton Section and was sent to California. With the boll weevil ravaging the South, the USDA fostered the culture of cotton west of the Rockies. Camp introduced the long-staple Pima variety in California's San Jauquin Valley, and soon thousands of acres were thriving. California farmers hailed him as their state's “Cotton Man.”
During the New Deal, Camp went to Washington as a policymaker with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. He returned to California in 1936 and launched his own farming operations near Bakersfield. Wofford Benjamin Camp prospered, amassed a large fortune, and used it to endow institutions in California and his native South Carolina.
