Settled in the 1780s, Fork Shoals was primarily an agrarian community whose residents supplemented farm income by working at the mill rather than relying solely on textile work, and over time it grew to include a post office, farm supply store, filing station, washerette, mercantile store, barber shop, and several grocery stores near the intersection of McKelvey Road and Cedar Falls Road, with population and commercial activity peaking in the early 1950s. The Fork Shoals Baptist Church was organized in 1780 in a brush arbor where the Reedy River and Big Creek, or Huff Creek, came together at the shoals and has stood at its current location since 1888. Dr. William Alton Ross, 1867-1923, was a prominent local doctor whose family home also served as his medical clinic; for more than 25 years he visited patients on horseback carrying supplies in two saddlebags. Ornan Lodge No. 69 of the Ancient Free Masons was chartered in 1849, first located in Cedar Falls, moved to Fork Shoals in the 1870s, and has been at its current location since 1983; two of its members later became governors of South Carolina, Robert Cooper and Carroll Campbell. From the early 1900s to 1960, the textile baseball team was an important part of community life. In 1870 Hewlett Sullivan built the first cotton mill in Greenville County after the 1865 end of the War Between the States, with his brother Dr. James Sullivan as general manager; the mill grew from 2,000 spindles to 14,000 by 1952, became generally known as the Fork Shoals Mill despite several owners and names, and ceased production in 1978. The old steel bridges over Huff Creek and the Reedy River were replaced by concrete bridges, though the old water tank still stands across McKelvey Road from the mill site. Along the Reedy River, the 95-acre Cedar Falls Park and Historic Society was developed by the Greenville County Recreation District in 2011 with funding from the Colonial Oil Pipeline Spill Mitigation Fund and the United States Department of Interior Land and Water Conservation Fund. At Cedar Falls, Shubal F. Arnold built a small textile mill with 72 spindles in 1820; it later passed to planter Hudson Berry and his two sons, who operated it until 1852, and the premises also included a general store, water-powered gristmill, sawmill, and cotton gin. In 1910 the Cedar Falls Dam was built to provide electrical power for the Fork Shoals Mill a mile upstream. The Hudson Berry Home, built in the 1780s, is one of the oldest houses in Greenville County, and Berry was a major landowner and early 1800s industrialist in southern Greenville County. A public school founded in 1877 on the grounds of Fork Shoals Baptist Church moved to its current location in 1916, while a private high school with dormitories operated from 1907 to 1917 on what is now South Old Fairview Road and is believed to have been the second rural high school in the state to be accredited. On December 22, 1775, the Battle of Great Cane Brake was fought between 1,360 South Carolina Patriots under Colonel William Thomson and British Loyalists under Major Patrick Cunningham; the Loyalists were routed, with five or six killed and about 130 captured, Cunningham escaped into the Cherokee Nation, and the Patriots had only one wounded soldier.