Rivertown U.S.A.

Rivertown U.S.A.
Cannelton, Indiana's River History

Cannelton Cotton Mill

We will take you on a tour of our Cannelton Cotton Mill.

This is the 1905 tour:
(All images of mill instruments and machines are courtesy of Mr. Michael Rutherford.
The other photographs were from Cannelton Media Club.)

A close up of the handcarved sandstone that the Cotton Mill was built with.	This photograph shows one of the floors of the mill that held many of the machines used to make the cloth from cotton. See how deep the room is? (This photograph was taken in 2000, before the renovations.)
The balebreaker machine was used to break the huge (500 pound) bales of ginned cotton to be used for cloth making.	On the day before processing, the bales were opened on the main floor of the Picker Building and allowed to expand overnight.
The opener machines had layers of spikes and needles which began separating the fibers into small fluffy masses.	Another opening machine was used to rework the wasted cotton not processed originally.
In 1890-early 1900 these slubbers were located on both the first and third floors of the mill. These machines helped wind the cotton yarn onto spools.	This is a close-up of the spool of yarn inside its case from one of the roving machines. It says it is a Saco-Lowell Standard Bobbin Holder.
The clean, fine cotton fibers were returned to the main floor for forming into rolls/laps of crude batting on three lap winders like this.	Each series of rollers on this carding machine would turn progressively faster, finally forming the fibers into loose rope of parallel fibers, called slivers and colied into tall round cans.

Click here for the 2005 tour

(All of the photographs on these two Cotton Mill pages were taken by Cannelton Elem. Media Club.)

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