For over 80 years, Goodall-Sanford Inc. was one of the world's leading textile companies in Sanford, Maine, originally manufacturing carriage blankets and eventually expanding to other fabrics. By the early 1950s, the company employed nearly a third of Sanford's residents, occupied 2 million square feet of floor space, and paid $15 million annually in payroll. In 1954, it lost its textile business to Burlington Mills, which began moving the operation south, and in the fall the mills closed, leaving 3,600 workers without jobs overnight and removing 13 million in payroll from the community. The newly formed Sanford-Springvale Chamber of Commerce responded with advertising campaigns and travel throughout the Northeast to attract manufacturing companies into the abandoned mills. By 1957, it had brought in 16 new businesses and restored 2,500 jobs. Sanford's comeback became widely known when NBC's Armstrong Circle Theatre dramatized it on television in "The Town That Refused to Die," and the story also appeared in Life and Pageant Magazine. That same innovative spirit continued in Sanford-Springvale through the work ethic and skills passed down through generations and the efforts of the Chamber and other city leaders to promote economic development.