Some residents of Henderson County began leaving their farms to work in the new textile mills opening in the county during this time period.
In 1901 the Blue Ridge Lime Company formed in Henderson County near the community of Fletcher. As far back as the early 1800s the county was producing limestone. By the early 1900s, Henderson County was first in the state in lime production.
Hendersonville Power and Light Company formed in 1904. A dam was built on the Big Hungry River. This first dam was destroyed in a flood. In 1913, the No. 2 dam was built on the river. This dam was only a handful of dams in Western North Carolina that survived the Flood of 1916. Henderson County was the first county in Western North Carolina to be supplied by water-driven electricity. In 1917, the company was known as the Home Electric Co. Later it became the Blue Ridge Power and Light Co. and owned by R.M. Oates.
The Skyland Hosiery Company began the first textile mill in the county in 1907. Later the name of the mill was changed to Chipman-Lacrosse Hosiery Mill. The location was in today’s East Flat Rock community.
The area of East Flat Rock was farm land at the time. The mill owners began buying land from local farmers and building houses for the workers on the “mill hill.” This was the county’s first mill town. Perry Walker began development of the town around the mill and the train depot. The mill closed, along with many textile mills in the Southeast, in the 1980s.
Later in the same year, 1907, the Green River Manufacturing Co. opened by owner Joseph O. Bell in what is called today Tuxedo. Bell developed and built a mill town near the mill and named the new mill town Tuxedo. This mill later was owned by the J.P. Stevens Co. It also closed in the 1980s.
In 1912, these two mills formed industrial baseball leagues. They played games throughout the region and later other industries joined the league. Industrial league baseball was extremely popular in the county through the 1950s.
The county’s booming timber industry in the late 1800s was of short duration. In 1910, George Vanderbilt sold and gave much of his land in the county to the federal government. In 1916, Pisgah National Forest formed, one of the first national forests in the Eastern United States. This ended much logging in the county.
In 1913 Freeze-Bacon Hosiery Co. opened in the Lenox Park section of Hendersonville near Whitted Street. In 1926, the company closed and the building was bought by Wing Paper Box Co. In 1989, the company became Federal Paper Board and moved to East Flat Rock.
The old ice plant also opened in the Lenox Park section about the same time. Residents living in and near Hendersonville could now purchase huge blocks of ice, carry the blocks home in wagons and put them in an ice box to keep dairy products and meat cold. Ice boxes began to replace spring houses in homes close to town.
In 1915 Grey Hosiery Mill, the fourth textile mill in the county, opened in Hendersonville on Grove Street. This mill also closed in the 1980s.