Avondale Mills
Avondale Mills began life in Yancey County, North Carolina as Avondale Incorporated with its operating company Avondale Mills. The company's history began in Alabama in 1897 when future Alabama governor B. B. Comer began operation of the mill in what would become the city of Avondale. For most of its history, the mill published The Avondale Sun, chronicling the company and its workers.
The Birmingham mill closed in 1971.
As late as 2005, the company employed more than 4,000 workers in 18 plants in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. That year a Norfolk-Southern Railroad accident near Graniteville, South Carolina caused irreparable damage to an Avondale Mills plant there. The company never recovered from the blow and closed shop in 2006.
On February 14, 2008 the former mill buildings in Pell City, which had been added to the National Register of Historic Places, burned in a fire. [1]
References
- Richardson, Charles (October 17, 1971) "Shuttles fall silent, looms' cadence drops to a whisper." Birmingham News - via Birmingham Rewound
- Graniteville train disaster at Wikipedia