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Sanford, Maine, emerged as an industrial city through the manufacture of woolen textiles, and central to this transformation was the International Woolen Company. Constructed in 1923, the International Woolen Company mill was the largest single building in Sanford’s mill yard and one of the last major textile plants built during New England’s woolen boom. Designed for efficiency and volume, the massive brick complex housed every stage of woolen production—from raw fiber to finished cloth—under one roof, embodying the fully mechanized, capital-intensive phase of the region’s textile industry and the decades of industrial development that had already made Sanford a nationally significant manufacturing center.

The mill represented the fully mechanized phase of textile manufacturing, relying on electric and steam power rather than water alone. Its size and layout reflected Sanford’s role as a national producer of specialty woolen fabrics, not a small local mill.

The International Woolen Company and the Making of Industrial Sanford

Sanford, Maine, emerged as an industrial city through the manufacture of woolen textiles. Central to this transformation was the International Woolen Company, whose massive mill complex—constructed in 1923—stood as the largest single structure in Sanford’s downtown mill yard and represented the final, fully mechanized phase of New England’s woolen industry.¹ Although it arrived later than the city’s earliest mills, International Woolen embodied decades of accumulated industrial knowledge, capital investment, and labor organization that had already made Sanford a nationally significant textile center.

The foundations of Sanford’s textile economy were laid in 1867 with the establishment of Goodall Mills, which harnessed the power of the Mousam River and railroad connections to produce woolen fabrics for national markets.² By the early twentieth century, Sanford mills specialized in high-value woolen and worsted goods rather than low-cost textiles. Among their most important products were mohair plush fabrics used in railroad cars, theaters, hotels, and automobiles; upholstery fabrics; carriage and automobile robes; blankets; and finished dyed cloth sold to commercial and industrial customers.³ Mohair plush was particularly significant: by the 1920s, Sanford mills were among the leading suppliers of this fabric in North America, a distinction that required specialized machinery and skilled finishing labor.⁴

The International Woolen Mill was designed for scale and efficiency. It operated as a vertically integrated plant, processing raw wool into finished fabric within a single complex. The mill contained carding machines to clean and align fibers, spinning frames to produce yarn, and hundreds of power looms to weave cloth.⁵ Large steam-heated dye vats allowed wool and woven fabric to be dyed in bulk, while shearing and nap-raising machines produced the dense, uniform surfaces required for plush and upholstery fabrics. Mills of this size typically ran continuously in shifts, producing many tons of finished fabric each week at peak output. Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps and preservation records indicate that facilities like International Woolen operated dozens of carding and spinning machines alongside extensive weaving and finishing departments, reflecting the capital-intensive nature of twentieth-century woolen manufacturing.⁶

This industrial output depended on a large and disciplined workforce. At its height, Sanford’s textile industry employed between 2,000 and 3,600 workers, forming the backbone of the local economy.⁷ Although precise employment figures for the International Woolen Company alone do not survive, mills of comparable size typically employed several hundred workers distributed across spinning, weaving, dyeing, finishing, maintenance, and administrative departments. Women constituted a substantial portion of the workforce, particularly in weaving and finishing rooms, while men predominated in dye houses, mechanical repair, and supervisory roles.⁸

Sanford’s mill workforce reflected successive waves of immigration and migration. French Canadian workers formed the largest group in the early twentieth century, joined by Irish and English descendants of earlier industrial labor and later by immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Textile work offered steady wages in a region with few alternatives, but conditions were demanding. In the early twentieth century, textile workers in Maine generally earned between $10 and $15 per week, with higher pay for skilled positions such as loom fixers, dyers, and foremen.⁹ Workdays commonly lasted ten hours, six days a week, and conditions included intense heat, constant machine noise, airborne wool fibers, and prolonged exposure to dyes and finishing chemicals.¹⁰

Housing reinforced the mills’ central role in daily life. Mill owners in Sanford supported the construction of worker housing within walking distance of the factories, selling homes at cost or offering affordable rents.¹¹ These neighborhoods fostered close social and cultural ties, but they also bound entire communities to the fortunes of the textile industry. When mills prospered, neighborhoods thrived; when production declined, hardship spread rapidly.

That decline came swiftly after World War II. By the early 1950s, Sanford’s textile economy collapsed as manufacturing shifted to the American South and overseas, where labor costs were lower and mills were newer.¹² Thousands of jobs disappeared in a matter of years, and most of Sanford’s mills fell silent. The International Woolen facility outlasted many others, continuing limited wool processing and dyeing operations into the late twentieth century. Environmental and regulatory records confirm industrial use at the site into the 1990s, leaving behind contamination that later required remediation.¹³

The International Woolen Company thus occupies a distinctive place in Sanford’s history. It was both a product of the city’s industrial maturity and one of the last active links to a manufacturing economy that once defined daily life for thousands of residents. Its massive brick walls, specialized machinery, and long-lived operations testify to the scale and sophistication of Maine’s woolen industry, while its eventual abandonment reflects the broader transformation of American manufacturing in the twentieth century.

Footnotes

1. City of Sanford, Maine, Sanford Millyard, accessed January 12, 2026.

2. Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, “Sanford, Maine,” accessed January 12, 2026.

3. Maine Historic Preservation Commission, Sanford Mills Historic District National Register of Historic Places Nomination.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, Sanford, Maine, mill district; Maine Historic Preservation Commission, Sanford Mills Historic District.

7. “From thriving industry to ‘no man’s land’: Sanford looks to revive mill district,” Portland Press Herald, October 10, 2022.

8. Maine Historic Preservation Commission, Sanford Mills Historic District.

9. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Historical Wages in Textile Manufacturing, New England, early twentieth century.

10. Ibid.

11. Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, “Sanford, Maine.”

12. Maine Historic Preservation Commission, Sanford Mills Historic District.

13. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, RCRA Corrective Action Site MED057977092, accessed January 12, 2026.

Bibliography

Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. Sanford, Maine. Accessed January 12, 2026.

City of Sanford, Maine. Sanford Millyard. Accessed January 12, 2026.

Maine Historic Preservation Commission. Sanford Mills Historic District National Register of Historic Places Nomination.

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. Sanford, Maine, Mill District.

“From thriving industry to ‘no man’s land’: Sanford looks to revive mill district.” Portland Press Herald. October 10, 2022.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Historical Wages in Textile Manufacturing: New England.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. RCRA Corrective Action Site: MED057977092.