In 1844, an original cotton mill with a wooden structure was demolished to make way for the brick buildings at Saxapahaw.
B.Everett Jordan had bought the mill in the 1930s, and the family sold it in 1978 to Dixie Yarns.
A tornado damaged the mill in 1994, and Dixie Yarns never reopened it, ending some 150 years of manufacturing at the mill, which served as a key industry and center of activity for the community of mill houses around Saxapahaw.
Mac Jordan, grandson of Jordan family that used to own the mill bought it back the next year rather than watch it crumble and spent in the last decade giving the property a US $10 million renovation.
The mill is still there because the river is flowing, as a millrace of water diverted from the Haw turns the wheels at the mill and the wheel twists a shaft attached to belts that provides power to machines on the three floors.
It wasn't the kind of mill redevelopment that traditional banks were familiar with because it wasn't in a denser, urban setting but Mac was able to get state and federal recognition of the property as historic.
Rivermill project is flourishing now with a completely new life with a sense of heartiness and new life that the place now radiates contradicting just how tough it was to turn the obsolete mill back into thriving pose.
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