Along the abandoned Alberton Rd to the remains of the Daniels Textile factory and surrounding communities. Human uses of and interactions with the natural environment in the Daniels Area have changed dramatically over the past two centuries. These changes largely reflect the human perception of how the valley is most useful to American Society. Nowhere is that change more prevalent and obvious than in the Daniels Area of the park.
Along the hike, visitors will see an abandoned road, several abandoned vehicles, two abandoned churches, a ghost community and an abandoned factory. The following is an orientation to the history of American industry, and specifically the cotton textile industry, that helped shape and influence the uses of this landscape through the years.
Manufacturing products by machines increased productivity exponentially during the 19th centuryβa field that was pioneered by the British and largely perfected by Americans. Consider straightening out the fibers of a cotton ball to make a long continuous stream. How tedious would this be to make a shirt, or even a sock, by slowly making each string by hand then weaving them together into a cloth.
Unless you took your time, how consistent would the thickness of your shirt be? Machines allowed something as simple as a cotton shirt to be manufactured in a much more efficient way.
Cotton milling became one of the first major industries to employ machinery on a grand scale, whereby giant room-size machines were brought in and operated by an army of semi-skilled or unskilled workers. Cotton mills first appeared in England in the s, and then later were introduced in New England and the Americas in the early s. The Oella Mill then known as the Union Manufacturing Company, was the first cotton mill in Maryland in , and, within 20 years, it would be joined by a half dozen on a short stretch of the Patapsco from here at Daniels to Ilchester, seven miles down stream.
