A rural Tennessee farming community was once the bustling site of the thriving Great Falls Cotton Mill. The three-story brick building is still there, but the workers and their surrounding dwellings are long gone. Remnants of mill workers’ late 18th-century and early 19th-century home life remains only in rusted, deteriorating wash buckets, sections of cars, and barbed wire fencing. Visitors can see it from a walking trail overtaken on both sides by over a century’s worth of growth.
But what sustained the textile mill is still a powerful and impressive force: the Great Falls waterfall. Due to an abundance of rain and the confluence of the Caney Fork, Collins, and Rock rivers, this Cumberland Plateau region northwest of Chattanooga, Tennessee, is replete with countless waterfalls. They surge from sheer limestone cliffs, cascade down descending levels of rocks, and spurt from springs along the banks of the rivers.
Some of the waterfalls have names, but since there are too many to count—from slender, foot-wide flows to wide torrents—most do not. Crooked in a bend in the vast river, Great Falls lives up to its name. It’s 30 feet high and shaped like a wide “U.”
In the late 19th century, four men from Warren County, Tennessee, recognized what could be achieved by harnessing the waterfall’s power. In 1892, Asa Faulkner, Jesse and H.L. Walling, and Clay Faulkner joined together to make that dream come true. With $30,000 ($1.o5 million in 2025), they funded and chartered the only textile mill in that area at the time. They built the brick structure and equipped it with a flume, turbine, ropes, and pulleys; all were powered by Great Falls.
Upwards of 300 workers were employed at the mill. Some oversaw and operated the mill’s machinery. Others were involved with spinning, weaving, bleaching, dying, printing, and finishing of fabrics. The mill mostly processed cotton, but also some wool products.
The Rural Architecture
In one black-and-white photograph on an educational kiosk at the historic site, workers pose along a platform next to the mill’s turbine overlooking the waterfalls. The brick structure is perched on a precipice beside the formidable waterfall.
Three levels of boarded up, arched windows communicate the light that must have once flooded the rectangular factory; the tall windows afforded workers fresh air to keep them from breathing only cotton dust. Since the mill was built prior to the Fair labor Standards Act of 1938, some workers could live inside the mill. Many widows and children took advantage of this and resided in berthing quarters. Family homes were constructed nearby, and fathers and sons walked to the mill daily. A post office, smithy, and market also catered to workers.
Across the road and up a slight hill was a medieval tower-style reservoir. It supplied drinking, bathing, and fire-fighting water. Inside the tower is a pump and a distinct conical wooden ceiling. Even today, clear spring water remains in the reservoir, a testament to the amount of water prevalent in the area and the quality of the stone structure’s construction.
The cotton mill culture was short-lived due to a catastrophic flood in March 1902 that destroyed Great Falls Cotton Mills’s essential and expensive turbine, as well as many workers’ homes. In 1969, the area became the 883-acre Rock Island State Park. Today, visitors must pass the cotton mill to enjoy various waterfalls and waterways. In fact, the Nationally Registered Historic Landmark mill is a structure that has provided passersby with a glimpse of America’s past for 123 years.
