Mill History

For 200 years, the site of the Rocky Mount Mills in Rocky Mount, N.C., has been a defining feature of the community’s natural and built environment.  There the long history of the state’s coastal plain has been enacted: as a riverine resource for American Indians and early European settlers, as a site of industrial slave labor, as a nexus of plantation cotton production, as one of the largest textile operations in the state, as a racially segregated mill community, as the center of a way of life for thousands of white families over many generations, as the site of an important civil rights victory, and since 1996 as a shuttered reminder of the collapse of the state’s most important industry for more than a century.  The mill was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1980; the mill village in 1999. 

Want to know more about the site’s history? Read on.

QUICK FACTS 

built in 1818 and closed operations in 1996 the city of Rocky Mount grew around the mill was burned down twice (1863, 1869) and rebuilt spun fabric for Confederate uniforms was built by slaves and utilized slave labor until 1852

bought by Capitol Broadcasting Corp. in 1997 and re-opening in 2018 took advantage of hydropower from the Tar River established by the Battle Family, prominent figures in state history air conditioning was added in the 1960s

 

Rocky Mount Mills History Resource Guide