Matthew Sasser | Daily Journal
                                The new owner of the historic Great Falls Mill says it is likely that he will demolish the property to make way for a commercial storage building.

Matthew Sasser | Daily Journal

The new owner of the historic Great Falls Mill says it is likely that he will demolish the property to make way for a commercial storage building.

<p>Matthew Sasser | Daily Journal</p>
                                <p>The new owner of the historic Great Falls Mill says it is likely that he will demolish the property to make way for a commercial storage building. </p>

Matthew Sasser | Daily Journal

The new owner of the historic Great Falls Mill says it is likely that he will demolish the property to make way for a commercial storage building.

<p>Matthew Sasser | Daily Journal</p>
                                <p>The Falling Creek waterfall behind the Great Falls Mill.</p>

Matthew Sasser | Daily Journal

The Falling Creek waterfall behind the Great Falls Mill.

ROCKINGHAM — Great Falls Mill in Rockingham has been a historic landmark for the area since its establishment in 1839 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

It wasn’t just a cotton mill, but it was the cotton mill that came to define the economic success and direction for Rockingham, wrote John Hutchinson, mayor pro tem of Rockingham and a member of the Richmond County Historical Society, in a 2017 paper that traced the legacy and influence of the mill.

The historic site was in the hands of the Downtown Rockingham Corporation from 2015 to 2019, until it was sold to a private owner, Ruben Fuentes.

Hutchinson said that they thought it could be a great place to for local events or for a recreational trail, but they never had the assets to do anything with the land. They had an architect look at it, but they never had a real estimate of the “tremendous” amount of money it would take to open it to the public.

“I’ve always viewed textile mills as you see castles in Europe — they represent an era that’s long since passed and it’s a physical reminder,” Hutchinson said. “As a historian, it can capture your imagination.”

John Stevenson, president of the Richmond County Historical Society, said that they had been hoping to preserve the area and make it an attraction for the county for decades.

He said that the Historical Society participated in discussions over having the site be preserved, but their involvement was primarily for research. Those discussions were stopped when they turned the property over to a private owner, and they have just been monitoring the development of the site.

Fuentes said he will most likely turn the area into a commercial storage building, but no definitive plans have been put in place. Doing this would mean the mill would be demolished.

“How would I preserve it?” Fuentes said. “It’s almost to the point of falling down.”

Fuentes said that he has done some cleaning of the property, but there’s still a lot of debris on the ground. No major changes have been made to the property at the moment.

There isn’t a firm timeline in place, but once the pandemic clears, he expects to get some more work done.

Stevenson said the decision to turn the property into a commercial building was a move he anticipated. He said he has no problems with any direction that Fuentes takes with land because it’s his property and he has to do what is best for his investment. Stevenson said he understands the decision because it would be too expensive to try and build a park or something similar to it.

“It is what it is. You hate to see something that is historic and beautiful and has a lot of potential for a park or other amenities go to waste,” Stevenson said. “You hate to see those landmarks disappear.”

Great Falls Mill began as the Richmond Manufacturing Company, and was completed in 1839. At four stories high, the mill was twice the height of any frame building anywhere in the area, taller than anything in downtown Rockingham, Hamlet, or Ellerbe, according to a in Feb. 7th, 1840 article in the Weekly Raleigh Register, which was dug up by Hutchinson. The mill’s 2,000 spindles and 20 looms were the newest, most efficient of any in the South, the paper wrote.

The mill was burned during Sherman’s March, because it had been an important source of Confederate fabric.

Robert L. Steele was one of the entrepreneurs who rebuilt the mill from the ruins the Union Army left behind. Steele would go on to build four mills in the area.

Hutchinson said that Great Falls Mill was the lynchpin to restarting local industry in our country after the Civil War.

In the summer of 1871, Great Falls was one of the largest mills in the South. It could produce 4,500 yards of cloth per day, according to Hutchinson.

Horace Steadman worked as a bookkeeper for the mill in the early 1920s, and his financial assistance would keep Richmond Memorial Hospital afloat in the 1950s. Former United States House of Representatives member C.B. Deane worked a summer job in the Great Falls office while a student in the 1920s.

“So many key people who went on to do other things in Richmond County were connected to the mill in some fashion,” Hutchinson said.

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Reach Matthew Sasser at 910-817-2671 or [email protected].