Coleridge Historic District

Coleridge is a Victorian mill village on a knoll above the Deep River in Randolph County, North Carolina. The Enterprise Manufacturing Company founded it in 1882 as the southernmost cotton mill on the river, and the site was first called Cole's Ridge. Its buildings, dating from 1882 to the late 1920s, include a brick cotton mill with Tudor Revival entrance towers, a company store, office, bank, warehouse, bending mill, steam plant, and rows of frame mill houses. A two-story Queen Anne house built around 1900 housed a mill manager. The company grew from 800 spindles to 6,000 by 1950, adding steam and hydroelectric power and a chair-making bending mill. It declined after 1950 and manufacturing stopped. The nomination values the village as a picturesque, largely intact riverside mill seat in one of the state's oldest manufacturing areas, with no intrusions. When described, the company store and post office still operated, while many other buildings stood abandoned.