Our Textile Legacy

Long before carpet manufacturing arrived, the Cherokee occupied this land until Indian Removal in 1838-39. Early settlers had established the crossroads community of Cross Plains by 1837 and it was renamed Dalton in 1847 by northern speculators who were following railroad development. This regional trading center developed with the Western and Atlantic Railroad in 1847 which ran from Chattanooga to Atlanta, followed by the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad in 1852.

Local entrepreneurs responded quickly to the cry to bring cotton mills to Georgia in the 1880s. Construction began on the Crown Cotton Mill, near Hamilton's spring, in 1884, followed by the Elk Cotton Mill and the American Thread Mill south of town. Dalton had become a cotton mill town.

By the early twentieth century, businessmen and boosters began to establish hosiery mills in many railroad towns, and Dalton businessmen joined in. In 1917, Chattanooga native G. Lamar Westcott, who studied yarns and knitting procedures at the Philadelphia Textile Institution, established Dalton Hosiery Mills, later renamed Westcott Hosiery Mills.

Earlier, young Dalton resident Catherine Evans, later Whitener, revived the candlewick tradition of producing hand-tufted bedspreads by tufting cotton yarns into muslin fabric. By the 1910s, other women followed her lead, building a cottage industry of tufting at home. Soon the spreads were displayed and sold along the Dixie Highway, later Highway 41 and known as Bedspread Boulevard or Peacock Alley. The area became known as the "Bedspread Center of the World." By the 1930s, the chenille industry moved into mechanized "spread shops" and expanded to include rugs and fashion clothing.

The now-successful tufted carpet industry emerged out of mechanized chenille production. Once again, entrepreneurial industry pioneers developed new machinery to make this industry efficient and productive, from needle punch to broadloom. Now, Dalton is well known as the "Carpet Capital of the World."

Explore Dalton's rich textile history, from its cotton mill villages through the chenille bedspread and now carpet businesses. Pick up a brochure in the Visitors Center to take the driving tour and see some of the important historical sites in the textile industry here. Be sure to visit the Crown Garden and Archives and the Bandy Heritage Center of Northwest Georgia, both of which preserve important documents and stories from this history.

Photos courtesy of Whitfield-Murray Historical Society, Bandy Heritage Center, Carpet and Rug Institute, Georgia Archives

(captions) , Cotton Sales on Hamilton Street, circa 1900 , Dalton Map, 1865 , Westcott Hosiery Mill

(panel 2) , Cotton Mills and Mill Villages , Dalton became a major cotton manufacturing center for northwest Georgia by the early twentieth century, and many residents lived in mill villages.

Dalton boosters eagerly participated in the "New South" cotton mill boom in Georgia from the 1880s through early 1900s, Atlanta Constitution editor Henry Grady passionately called for a "Cotton Mill Campaign" in 1886. Grady argued that the South needed to rebuild its economy by bringing "the cotton mill to the cotton fields." Expanded railroads would link cotton mills, now powered by steam or electricity, to markets in the South and the North.

A group of business leaders in Dalton and Tennessee established Crown Mill here in 1884. Alongside Hamilton Spring, loud, rumbling spinning frames and weaving looms transformed raw cotton into finished cloth. The three-story brick mill dwarfed other buildings in town and promised to fuel the local economy.

To house the workers, the company built mill houses on "Factory Hill" overlooking the mill. Beginning with six homes, the mill village eventually included three hundred homes for the workers who came from the countryside to labor in the mills. Mills employed primarily white women and children to operate the machines, while men held more skilled, higher-paying jobs.

Two large cotton mills followed, each with its own mill village, first Elk Cotton Mill in 1907 and then American Thread Mill in south Dalton. Crown Mill purchased the Elk Mill in 1924, renaming it Boylston-Crown. Historian Douglas Flamming writes that Dalton had a "noticeable swagger" by the 1920s, anticipating a bright future.

Companies created mill villages to maximize their profits and manage their employees. Mill houses provided convenient access to the workplace and allowed the company to create a stable workforce. The wood-frame homes were single-family or duplex homes, with a coal-burning fireplace, front porch, and outhouse. Many families kept gardens, chickens, and sometimes a cow in the backyard.

Mill villages were like small towns, managed by the mill. Company stores sold food and supplies at high prices. However, the mills funded schools for children, and Crown offered a night school for adults. Companies sponsored baseball and basketball teams, community bands, scout troops, yard improvement campaigns, barbecues, and a variety of community events and services.

Within these mill villages, workers built community. They shared music and stories on the front porches of their homes and enjoyed holidays and celebrations together. They married other mill workers and created extended family networks. The villages became, in the expression of many workers, "like a family."

Photos courtesy Historical Society, Bandy Heritage Center, Carpet and Rug Institute, Georgia Archives

(captions) , Crown Cotton Mill , Mill Village Street , Crown Point School , Westcott Mill Baseball Team

(panel 3) , Women Build the Chenille Industry

(panel 4) , Golden Age of Tufting . This historical marker is in Dalton in Whitfield County Georgia