Woodside Mill

Front: Woodside Cotton Mill was the first and largest textile mill owned by brothers John T. (1864-1946), J. David (1871-1945), and Edward F. Woodside (1875-1943). Built in 1902 with 11,000 spindles and 300 looms, it expanded in 1912 to 112,000 spindles and was claimed to be “the largest cotton mill under one roof” in America. The Woodside brothers also owned mills in Fountain Inn and Simpsonville, as well as Easley and Liberty in Pickens County. Reverse: By 1929 the 220-acre mill village housed more than 2,400 workers and their families in 442 houses. It featured gently-curving oak-lined streets, a company store, two schools, a Baptist church (1910) and Methodist church (1921), a baseball field, and a YMCA building. The mill sold 10 acres for Parker High School, built in 1924 to serve several area mill villages. Woodside Mill and its village were listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.