North Pownal developed around water-powered industry along the Hoosic River, where an eighteenth century grist mill and a mid-nineteenth-century woolen mill were the first industries to locate. The opening of a rail line in 1859 made the site more appealing to industry. To help meet labor demands in the cotton mill, French-Canadian immigrants, women, and children were employed, and in 1910 Lewis Hine photographed children working there as part of a national investigation of child labor practices. His image of 12-year-old Addie Card was later used on a Child Labor Reform stamp issued by the U.S. Postal Service in 1998. The cotton mill also led to the development of a small village to support the mill and its workers, including company-built worker housing, a company school for workers' children, and Powell's General Store. After the woolen mill burned to the ground in 1863, the site was quickly reoccupied by the North Pownal Cotton Mill, whose brick building featured a stair tower with exterior doors for transporting materials between levels. Because of aging technology and increasing competition from mills in the southern states, the cotton mill closed in 1930, and the building reopened in 1936 as the Pownal Tanning Company, which converted sheep and cow hides into finished leather for products such as shoes and coats. With decreasing demand for leather, Vermont's last commercial tannery closed in 1988.