During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Bay Spring developed both as a summer colony of small cottages and as Barrington's industrial center. The railroad brought day visitors, cottage owners, and families who rented tents in a campground at what is now Lavin's Marina on Narragansett Avenue, where they enjoyed cool breezes off the Providence River, swimming, boating, fishing, digging clams, gathering oysters, and dancing at the Bay Spring Yacht Club. Mary Clare Feeley, a summer resident from 1928-1955, recalled that campers helped each other pitch tents with a big pole in the middle, kept them up all summer, and took them down after Labor Day, with at least a hundred tents standing. Bay Spring's industries included Annawomscutt Mill, built in several phases between 1905 and 1914 on Bay Spring Avenue as a knitting mill, later used for dyeing and finishing cotton goods, and in 1911 renamed O'Bannon Mill, which ultimately became the country's largest manufacturer of imitation leather, primarily for the automobile industry. Later owners included Collins and Aikman, which produced cotton goods such as tent material for World War Two troops, and by 1959 the mill was the town's largest employer with 325 workers. Farther west on Bay Spring Avenue, the Rhode Island Lace Works, built in 1904, manufactured fine lace for wedding dresses, hat veils, and curtains for customers around the world until it closed in 1990 and was demolished for an assisted living facility. The brackish waters of Bullock's Cove also supported a profitable oystering industry, with three oyster houses helping make Barrington the second largest oyster grower in Rhode Island in 1885. The Bay Spring Yacht Club, built circa 1910, hosted billiards and card games on its lower level and dances and stage shows upstairs until the 1938 hurricane destroyed it.