Bladenboro Cotton Mills

Just before the New Year, I found myself in Bladenboro. I rolled into town on a mission—grab footage for a video about the Beast of Bladenboro and meet a friend to document storm damage in Lumberton that, unbelievably, still hasn’t been fully addressed a decade later.

I checked both boxes.

And somewhere between the back roads and the abandoned places, I found something else entirely: a new muse.

The Bladenboro Cotton Mills.

Shocking, I know. Cassie fell in love with a dilapidated building. I’m nothing if not consistent.

But can you blame me? Just look at it. Even now, it’s easy to imagine the place alive again—vibrant, loud, humming with spinning machines and the steady rhythm of workers’ footsteps. Buildings like this don’t feel empty so much as paused, like they’re holding their breath.

For much of the 20th century, Bladenboro Cotton Mills shaped this town. Though the machines have long gone quiet, the mill’s story is still woven tightly into the community, a reminder of how industry could lift up a small Southern town—and how its absence could leave deep scars behind.

It all began in 1885, when two brothers from Little River, South Carolina—R.L. and H.C. Bridger—arrived in Bladenboro with about $1,000 and a willingness to take risks. They started small, opening a general store and buying land as the settlement slowly grew. Over time, the Bridgers expanded into turpentine production, opened a cotton gin in 1887, and helped charter the Bank of Bladenboro in 1908.

Their biggest gamble came in 1912 with the opening of Bladenboro Cotton Mills. The mill produced cotton yarn, tapping into the region’s raw cotton supply and a growing national appetite for textiles. What they built wasn’t just a factory—it was the backbone of a town.

For decades, the mill was Bladenboro’s economic heartbeat. By the 1940s, it employed around 1,600 people—roughly the same number as the town’s entire population today. Mill paychecks kept food on tables, lights on, and storefronts full. On weekends, downtown buzzed. People shopped, went to the movies, bowled, and cheered on the local minor league baseball team, fittingly called the Spinners.

Life revolved around the mill village—modest homes, shared routines, gardens out back, and a closeness that comes from everyone rising and resting by the same whistle. Generations passed through those doors, and Bladenboro grew up around them.

But like so many small, independent textile operations across the rural South, the mill couldn’t outrun the changes that followed World War II. Larger competitors, advancing technology, and eventually globalization chipped away at its future. In 1980, the mill was sold to Highland Yarn Mills in High Point. Ownership shifted again in the years that followed, but the outcome was the same.

By around 2000, the Bladenboro Cotton Mills shut down for good.

What remains now are fragments—weathered brick walls, a smokestack reaching into the sky, rusted metal slowly surrendering to time. They stand as quiet witnesses to an era when this place was loud, crowded, and full of motion.

The mill may be gone, but its legacy lingers. The Bridger family’s vision shaped Bladenboro for generations, and their story is part of a larger Southern and American one—ambition and hard work, community and independence, progress and loss.

But the town isn’t frozen in time. It still breathes.

Maybe that’s why I lingered longer than planned. In the hush of those old walls, I heard not just echoes of the past, but a whispered reminder that even when the machines stop, the pulse of a place endures.