Lonaconing Silk Mill

The Lonaconing Silk Mill also known as the Klotz Throwing Factory, is the only remaining totally intact silk mill in the nation. The site’s value is amplified by its contents and history.

Built, in part, with money raised by the townspeople themselves in 1906, the mill is in the National Lonaconing Historic District with 277 other 19th and early 20th Century buildings, which attest to Lonaconing as a center of the iron, coal, and silk industries in Western Maryland.

• Inside of the three-story structure, long rows of heavy, old-fashioned, belt-driven machinery made from high temperature steel, symmetrical rows of wooden creels and over a million bobbins remain.  Antique fire pails hang from hooks above the factory floor.  Its appearance today reflects the way it looked the day it was closed by a labor dispute on July 7th 1957… a perfect snap-shot in time.  Even personal items remain from employees who couldn’t get back into the building after its doors were locked.
• Notable among the employees’ timecards we find Robert Moses (Lefty) Grove, the famous baseball hall of fame left-handed pitcher, as one of the teenagers who worked at the Mill.

 

Labor History - The Lonaconing Silk Mill, stands as a significant model of labor history.  The Lonaconing Silk Mill was placed in this coal mining town deep in the Appalachian Mountains because of the cheap and abundant labor force comprised of the wives and children of the coal miners.   Both the coal and silk industry fostered many changes in labor history, as the unions developed so did the local labor leadership.

Industrial Architectural Design - The Mill is an example of early 20th Century industrial architecture having a brick exterior, hand-hewn beams, and maple floors. The huge hand hewn beams have been eyed by the salvagers and have the potential to lure the owners away from preservation for their great value.

Industrial History - The Mill offers a complete portrait of an early 20th century silk factory from the ranks of perfectly preserved spinning machines to the reams of payroll and other documents detailing life on the factory floor.  Many linear feet of industrial documents also exist to be archived. The Mill once nurtured the thriving community of Lonaconing, MD.  The Lonaconing Silk Mill is a powerful icon of Lonaconing’s rich and productive past.  The prosperity of the communities of the George’s Creek watershed during the industrial age has faded, but a wealth of history and cultural heritage remains including the Mill and other magnificent historical structures, such as National Register Listing “George's Creek Coal and Iron Company Furnace No. 1

 

In 2007 the George’s Creek Watershed Association nominated the Lonaconing Silk Mill for the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.