Copland Fabrics Designated

For almost two centuries, a textile mill operated on this peninsula between the Haw River and Stony Creek in Burlington, North Carolina. The extant buildings reflect the industrial architecture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the changes in production of textiles. Though buildings from its inception are no longer extant, the site was the location of the first cotton mill in Alamance County.

Alamance County was a locus of fabric production starting with water-powered mills along the Haw River in the nineteenth century. In the early twentieth century, the local industry benefitted from the closure of northern mills and the relocation of their workers, making North Carolina a national leader in textiles. Copland Fabrics and its CEO, J. R. Copland, shifted production here to rayon and synthetics. Innovations in techniques and machinery developed and implemented at this facility allowed Copland Fabrics to produce good quality rayon economically. Additional expansion to fabric finishing gave the conglomerated Copland companies vertical integration as well as fee-based services to other mills. Globalization with the combination of low wages and lax environmental regulation overseas moved many production industries to foreign countries, and the American manufacturing base declined. Copland Fabrics outlasted many of its domestic competitors, remaining in operation until 2018.

The mill buildings show the evolution of fabric production from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century in a county noted for its leadership in textiles. The complex includes a mill with late nineteenth century origins, an evolved early twentieth century finishing plant, a main office dating from the 1920s, a 1938 power building, a medical office, a midcentury water plant, two water towers and a second mill dating to 1969.

Copland Fabrics was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in August 2024 with a nomination by Hanbury Preservation Consulting