The Augusta Canal

The Augusta Canal's role in attracting industry remained uncertain until the Enterprise Mill was built. A granite block building from 1848 at the canal end of this complex, a former flour mill, is the only remaining industrial structure built on the original 1845 Augusta Canal. After enormous public investment enlarged the canal in 1875, local residents grew worried when two years passed and only one additional mill, a small one, had opened. The canal's importance to local industry and the economy became evident with construction of the Enterprise Mill in 1877. Built and continuously operated as a textile mill into the 1980's, it was the first large-scale mill to use the increased water power created by the canal's enlargement. Huge turbines within the complex still generate electricity from hydropower even though operations ceased years ago. The Enterprise Mill is one of the best preserved examples of the Second Empire style in American industrial architecture, with characteristic convex-curved Mansard tower roofs. Its success was followed by seven other cotton mills in the next decade, helping the city become the South's top producer of textile goods by the turn of the century. The canal was built in 1845 and enlarged in 1875 from Stevens Creek Dam east to 7th St.

Augusta-Richmond County consolidated government (balance), Georgia · United States