Washington Mills-Mayodan Plant

Textile production began on this ten-acre site beside the Mayo River in Mayodan in 1895, when Mayo Mills was built to spin cotton yarn. The company was organized by Francis H. Fries with investors including Washington Duke, and it began operating in April 1896 with two water wheels fed by a two-thirds-mile canal. The complex later became Washington Mills, then Tultex, and closed in 1999. Two large brick mills remain: the 1895 spinning mill, expanded between 1897 and 1954, and the 1911 knitting mill, extended three times between 1931 and 1941. Both use heavy timber framing, segmental-arch windows and little ornament. A boiler room, engine house, warehouses and other support buildings complete the group. The nomination treats the plant as an example of North Carolina's late nineteenth-century industrial growth, which depended on railroads and the idea that manufacturing could replace farming as the state's economic base. The mill also prompted the founding of Mayodan as a company town.