Valley Rewind: Black Mountain Hosiery Mill

In celebration of Labor Day, this month the Swannanoa Valley Museum and History Center is highlighting photos from its collections that feature historic working people of the Swannanoa Valley. In this July 12, 1941, photograph from the museum’s collections, employees of the Black Mountain Hosiery Mill pose at their first annual picnic at Mill Creek. The mill opened in 1929 on Black Mountain Avenue in Black Mountain and continued to grow steadily over the next decade, despite the Great Depression. The mill was still in operation in the early 1950s, with Charles Clevenger serving as the plant superintendent. Clevenger’s sons, Jack and Jim, would go on to start the Clevenger Knitting Mills (later Clevenger Sox) in the 1960s.