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MAYODAN — Both of Cindi Johnson’s grandparents retired from Washington Mills. She still holds on to a few of their pay stubs.

She worked one summer in the sewing room and jokes that stitching children’s sleepers in the summer heat was her incentive to finish college.

To her, those memories — and similar ones shared by other residents in this western Rockingham County town — are reason enough to save the mill from the demolition that already has begun.

The building’s new owner is slowly and meticulously dismantling the towering brick structure along N.C. 135, its wood and brick fated for salvage and sale.

It’s news to residents, who thought the cranes they’ve noticed recently on the property were signs of the long-awaited renovation of the property. Johnson and others pleaded with Town Council members Monday night to help them preserve the property.

Residents have started a Facebook campaign to spread the word about what’s happening at the mill and garner support.

“I would like for there to be a dialogue between whomever owns the mill at this time and the citizens and the town to look at it historically rather than just as a piece of property,” Johnson said after the meeting.

Garen Nelson of Mooresville bought the mill in October. He said Tuesday that it could take as long as two years to tear down the building to salvage the timber and brick.

Town officials said this week their hands are tied. Nelson has followed all the appropriate legal channels to proceed with his plans, they said.

“There’s little influence that the government itself can have on this activity,” Town Manager Michael Brandt said.

The timber will be sold to make floors, Nelson said. The concrete and brick will be cleaned and sold, he said.

“We do have plans to preserve some of the pieces in the mill, and we do want to save a part of the building and try to reuse it if the county will let us,” Nelson said. He also wants to develop the property into an RV park.

The mill has changed names and hands over the years. It opened as Mayo Mills in 1896 and became Washington Mills in the 1920s. It closed as Tultex in 1999.

Mayodan was incorporated in 1899. The mill rented and sold houses to employees. There are people in the town who worked their entire careers there, said Rockingham County historian Bob Carter.

“It was really a one-industry town,” Carter said. “They kept everybody going.”

The development group Spruce Place bought the mill with grand plans to turn it into a Gospel Hall of Honor and events center. Nothing ever materialized, and the man listed in property records as Spruce Place’s president, Samuel E. Albert Jr., died last week.

The mill is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but that distinction does not limit what a private property owner can do with such a structure, according to information on the National Register website.

But history has got to count for something, residents say.

“That mill fed the families here. That mill housed the people,” said lifelong Mayodan resident Norma Osteen. “It put food on the table. It provided them power. They had their own power plant down there.

“I think that a Southern cotton mill town has a special bond, a special sense of community and a special part of history.”

Mike Atkins spent 15 years working at the mill in industrial engineering, manufacturing and personnel. “When I’d walk from the office to the mill, I really would just have a feeling that this company takes care of people. And it did. And it’s not like companies nowadays.”

The loss of the mill is the latest of many for Mayodan residents. Atkins, a town native, can tick off what the town has lost over the years: a theater, department stores, lumber plant, pool room and two drugstores.

“It’s been kind of like a cancer eating on you. And you don’t know you got it till it’s too late. And that’s about what’s happened down here,” Atkins said, referring to the mill.

“The cancer has come to the surface now on everybody and may be terminal. And that’s the problem, and we’re trying to find a cure. And I don’t know that we’re going to be able to find one.”

Contact Jonnelle Davis at 373-7080 or jonnelle.davis@news-record.com