At dawn on the morning of June 6, 1903, floodwaters roared through the Pacolet River valley, striking mill village after mill village without warning and turning the day into the deadliest flood event in state history. Historical accounts claim 70 deaths, though the toll was likely higher. The flood destroyed four textile mills, heavily damaged two others, ruined at least 75 homes, swept away warehouses filled with cotton bales, and left many victims never found or buried where their bodies were discovered, some as far away as Union County. Across a 12-mile path of devastation, the flood scattered textile machinery, downed trees, flattened houses, washed-out bridges, and the bodies of its victims, while more than 4,000 cotton mill employees from Converse to Pacolet went without pay for many months. In Converse, the Clifton No. 3 mill was struck by a wall of water 20-25 feet high moving at 40 mph; the power plant collapsed first, then the smokestack, the entire mill, and finally the dam. Only three of the mill's 198 7,000 pound looms were ever found, several miles downstream. Sixteen mill houses on this side of the river washed from their foundations, killing at least a dozen people, while a highway bridge just downstream was destroyed and the electric trolley rails were ripped up and never restored to Converse. Two miles farther downstream at Clifton No. 1 mill, a foot bridge used by workers washed out in the first wave, parts of the mill soon fell away until one-third of the structure was gone, and muddy water, slimy silt, and tons of detritus filled the mill to the ceilings. Riverside homes were swept into the torrent, and people on shore saw flood victims clinging to rooftops as onlookers could do little to help. At Clifton No. 2 mill and nearby Santuck, families climbed into trees, yet the flood took its greatest human toll there as dozens of mill houses washed away and at least 60 people, including 11 in one family, were reported killed within hours. Flooding on tributaries worsened the destruction below the Clifton mills, where Lawson's Fork Creek, swollen by heavy rains in northern Spartanburg County, carried four collapsed cotton warehouses, hundreds of bales of cotton, and a Southern Railway trestle from three miles away at Glendale Mill into the Pacolet to batter downstream communities. As waters began to recede in Converse, destruction was just beginning 12 miles downstream in Pacolet, where residents fled to higher ground and watched Pacolet Mill No. 1 collapse first, then No. 2, and finally a large section of No. 3 break loose into the swift water. The mill building now on the hilltop, known as Converse Mill, was rebuilt soon afterward farther from the river, and the downstream factories and many mill houses were also rebuilt.