High Shoals: Iron Cannon Balls to Cotton Cloth

High Shoals in Gaston County began as an iron-making site. Around seventeen ninety-five, a Swiss-born entrepreneur named John Fulenwider established ironworks at the South Fork Catawba River, using the charcoal process to produce pig iron. During the War of eighteen twelve, the High Shoals Iron Works supplied cannon balls to the United States Army. The ironworks operated until eighteen seventy-five.

In the eighteen nineties, Charlotte industrialist Daniel Tompkins bought twelve hundred acres here and chartered a textile mill, transforming the site from iron to cotton. The mill opened in eighteen ninety-nine with five thousand spindles. By nineteen ten it ran over sixteen thousand spindles and five hundred looms. The company owned the entire town, housing, stores, everything, making High Shoals a classic Piedmont mill village. The town was not incorporated as an independent municipality until nineteen seventy-three, one of the last company towns in Gaston County to achieve self-governance.