The Chiquola Mill was opened by James David Hammett in 1903, originally for the production of coarse cotton sheeting. It was only one of hundreds of textile mills that began to pop up throughout the American South during this time. Honea Path was a tiny, isolated town of less than seven hundred people before the mill. But over the next decade, the population was swelled by mill hands drawn from the ranks of upstate South Carolina's small farmers, who had been pressured off their farms by tightened credit. By the early 1930s, Honea Path was home to around 2,700 people, mostly employed in the mill or related industries.
