Since I visited in 2011 the plans to build a bigger, better complex have evidently come to fruition. When I was there, the lone upgrade was a cement shoe fitted around the USGS benchmark. Such is the nature of progress.

The North Carolina side of the mountain was once owned by Tarheel Congressman Charles Hart Taylor, among the wealthiest and, allegedly, most corrupt members of Congress (no ethics charges were ever brought against him). Taylor sold some 8,000 acres of the mountain in 2010 to The Conservation Fund, which donated the summit area to the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources.  

This is another highpoint for which my visual record is regrettably poor. One day I may have to revisit Sassafras to experience for myself the Palmetto State's architectural folly. For me, the rustic lookout just down the trail from the actual summit was the nicest spot on the mountain.