The Simpsonville Cotton Mill opened in 1908 after several leading men of Simpsonville asked Edward F. Woodside of the Pelzer Manufacturing Co. to help establish a textile mill. With Woodside as president and his brother John T. as secretary, it opened with 8,000 spindles and 200 looms producing several kinds of cotton cloth, and by 1911 it had grown to 25,000 spindles and 600 looms. In 1911 it merged with Fountain Inn Cotton Mill and Woodside Cotton Mill in Greenville to form Woodside Cotton Mills. This branch became Simpsonville's largest employer until after World War II, with as many as 650 employees in the 1950s and 1960s. Its mill village had four streets of mill houses, a company store, a recreation building, and a baseball field, and the Woodside Gym, built in 1947, is now part of the Simpsonville Senior Center.