Dating from the 1920s, this 966-foot iron-truss and reinforced-concrete bridge—which links the so-called “long mill” north of the Dan River with the “white mill” #8 on the south—is the longest covered span in the nation, lust a small part of the former Riverside Mills, dating from 1882. Set for rehabilitation by Riverside Mills Redevelopment Group, LLC, the property was saved from demolition earlier this year when a development partnership and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, encouraged its original owner, Dan River, Inc., to make a charitable gift of the bridge and some thirteen historic mill buildings on the river’s north bank to the Danville Historical Society.

Plans for the complex span a variety of adaptive uses. Already, studies are underway for a principal component of this long-term project—a museum dedicated to the 1903 train disaster, the “Wreck of the Old 97,” made world-famous by the ballad of that title. Once construction commences, development partners Scott Burton of Danville, and I. Britton Whitney also envision shops, offices and residential space.

The significance of the Riverside complex is touted in the Virginia Landmarks Register as “representing several stages in the century-long development of one of America’s major textile companies (Dan River)..,.” Structures on the north bank consist of building types ranging from small, brick vernacular mills and outbuildings of the ‘cotton factory fever’ of the 1880s and 1890s to a massive reinforced concrete dye house of the early l920s, a sister structure to the even larger Mill #8 on the south side of the river. In addition, there are remains of a flour mill, power canal and support buildings such as boiler houses and coal bunkers.