Ferguson is a ghost town, a former lumber-mill settlement, in Orangeburg County, South Carolina. It was a company town owned by Northern lumbermen Francis Beidler and Benjamin F. Ferguson, both of Chicago. The co-CEOs founded the Santee River Cypress Lumber Company in 1881 for the purpose of harvesting old-growth timber from blackwater river wetlands in central South Carolina. The firm, which controlled 165,000 acres (67,000 ha) of land, concentrated its efforts on bald cypress timber.