Woodberry: Where Eighty Percent of the World's Sailcloth Was Made

Woodberry sits in the Jones Falls Valley between stone duplexes built for mill workers in the eighteen forties. The cotton mill went up in eighteen forty-three, built to weave cotton duck, the heavy canvas used for sails and tents. This narrow valley became one of the great cotton duck centers of the world.

Later the operation became part of the Mount Vernon-Woodberry mills, among the largest producers of cotton duck anywhere. The company town retained the pastoral feel of its founding, isolated from surrounding neighborhoods by the valley topography. As demand for cotton duck dropped in the later twentieth century, the mills declined and closed. The stone worker housing and the old mill buildings survived. The neighborhood is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.