Glendale preserves a layered history within a mile of colonial ironworks, a Revolutionary War skirmish, and a major Southern textile mill site. The village remains, though the mill was destroyed by fire in 2004, and the area has shifted toward conservation, recreation, and education through the 30-acre Glendale Shoals Preserve, the Glendale Outdoor Leadership School, and Wofford College's environmental studies center and teaching garden. Glendale's mill history began in 1834 when textile pioneer James Bivings moved from Lincolnton, NC, bought 750 acres along Lawson's Fork, and developed a mill that operated for almost 150 years. Known at first as Bivingsville, the Bivingsville Cotton Manufacturing Company was for a time the largest cotton mill in Spartanburg County. In 1855 Dexter Edgar Converse bought the mill with Bomar and Company and expanded it to 1,435 spindles, 26 looms, and 58 workers. After the Civil War began, the company wove cloth, and Converse kept it afloat by bartering during hard times. In 1870 Converse and his cousin Albert Twichell bought the factory, renamed it D.E. Converse and Company, and expanded it despite Reconstruction and the Panic of 1873 to 5,000 spindles, 120 looms, and 175 workers, while the village grew to 60 homes. In 1878 Bivingsville was renamed Glendale at the suggestion of Converse's wife after a trip to Glendale, California. After Converse died in 1899, Albert Twichell became president, and by 1900 the town had a school with 125 students and one teacher. Worker shortages led to recruiting laborers from the mountains of North Carolina. World War I increased production, the Great Depression hurt the mills in the 1930s, and World War II brought another boom, with the mill running three shifts. From 1946 to 1957 J.L. Stifel and Sons of Wheeling, West Virginia, owned the mill, converted it from steam power to electricity, remodeled many company houses, and removed about 35 others, leaving about 120 in the village. In the 1950s the houses began to be sold to workers. In 1957 the mill, then employing 600 people, was sold to Indian Head Mills, and that sale marked the decline of textile manufacturing in Glendale. Indian Head Mills stopped manufacturing there in November 1961. Glendale had once supported a business district with a machine shop, carpenter shop, circular sawmill, wool-carding mill, general store, butcher shop, radio repair shop, shoe shop, and a hot dog shop called Reeves, but after the mill closed these businesses gradually disappeared. From 1961 until 2004 the vacant mill was used for warehouse space by several owners, including for Rolls Royce parts, until the factory burned in 2004. Afterward, owner Glyn Morris and his partners donated the remaining mill office building to Wofford College and also gave six acres along the river to the Palmetto Conservation Foundation for the trail, reflecting Glendale's transition from an industrial village to a center for tourism, recreation, education, and service.