• Mood: contemplative

Urban Mill Adventure

Today I toured the remains of the Laurens Mill in Laurens SC. I got some incredible pictures and posted them in this Flickr set. Research showed that the mill is featured in a Urban Exploration Resource (UER) web page. In 2004 the mill was undergoing demolition. This great set of pictures shows that state of the building at that time. There are portions of the mill still standing in 2007. In the "before" and "after" pictures below note the position of the one smokestack on the property.

I will present a more complete set of pictures in the future. Do check out my flickr set. There are still some amazing features to the destroyed building, partially because there has been so much already taken away from it.

2004:


2007:


Historical Postcard:



History of the Mill:

The Laurens Mill was a large cotton mill built in 1895. After the civil war, the area's economy was fairly devastated as slave labor was replaced with sharecropping. Like many other upcountry cities, Laurens attempted to revive its economy by spinning cotton instead of just growing it. The Laurens Mill and nearby mills in Clinton and Watts Mills were instrumental in the revitalization effort. The only other major industry was a large bottle manufacturing plant.

After World War II Laurens started to become less dependent on the textile industry. A number of manufacturers built plants and other manufacturers placed some large warehouses in the area. Over the years Laurens has also increasingly become a bedroom community for the nearby communities of Greensville and Spartanburg.