One mile south stood a community for workers of the Attapulgus Clay Co. with 20 houses, a telephone, and a company store from 1930 to 1955. Its residents worked 12 hours daily mining Attapulgite, a type of fuller's earth found only in this area. The site included an electric dragline, the largest in the U.S. in 1933, a 3,000 square foot control house, and a 9 cubic yard bucket that removed 100 feet of overburden. Small steam engines dug and loaded ore into cars on a narrow gauge railroad that carried it to the plant in Attapulgus, Georgia. Overburden piles rose as high as 100 feet above open pits 150 feet wide, 100 feet deep, and 2 1/2 miles long. In 1955 all houses were removed to reach the last profitable vein of clay here, and mining shifted to other locations. Fuller's earth has long been used to filter impurities from oil and in fulling, a process that removes oil from wool.