Launched as a grand experiment by three brothers— the Schoolfields, and a trio of their business colleagues—Riverside Cotton Mills, now the textile giant Dan River Inc., began 120 years ago on the Dan River’s south side. Its first home, built on the site of an antebellum woolen mill, still stands behind the company’s former research building on lower Main Street near Bridge.

By the mid 1880s the company’s expansion across the river sealed the mill’s destiny as the cornerstone of the City’s economy. This shift of focus north was Riverside Mills response to the chronic problem of procuring adequate water power. 

Today, the mill buildings spread across twenty-nine acres between the Main and Union Street bridges are the tangible evidence in bricks and mortar of the “cotton factory fever” which gripped Danville during the 1880s and 1890s. 

Earlier this year, a group of developers intent on preserving the so-called “long mill” and related structures—thirteen in all—purchased this irreplaceable site, part of a National Register historic district at the horseshoe bend of the river where Danville began. Now once again dubbed Long Mill, this project of historic rehabilitation and adaptive reuse promises to be one of the most significant to Danville ever. In only a few months, mountains of debris have been removed, revealing the essence of timeless utilitarian architecture reflected in these mills built between the mid 1880s and 1920. 

Much of the site will be open for inspection during the afternoon, including a 966-foot iron-truss and reinforced- concrete bridge, the longest covered span in the nation.