History of Rivermill

Along the Chattahoochee River, north of the original city of Columbus, a series of hills climax in a high bluff;  Lovers' Leap. This beautiful area has always attracted visitors. Native Americans certainly used this riverbank to manufacture tools, to hunt and, especially, to fish, even though the major historic-period Indian population centers (Coweta and Cusseta) were located south of the fall line, archaeologists found a "flint quarry" in the approximate area, and a spud or ceremonial axe head in the McKnight Collection in St. Louis museum is cited as being from Bibb City.

Some residents insist that there is an Indian burial ground in the area, probably to the north of Bibb City. Indian legends form an important part of the local mythology. The most lasting is that association with Lover's Leap, the rock bluff over the turbulent Chattahoochee. A frontier (or perhaps a high place) legend attributed the name of the pinnacle to Indian lovers who plunged to their deaths rather than live apart.

While the Indians used this land, they probably did little to change the landscape. The Europeans and Africans would transform the land in the 1850s. John Winter, an important antebellum entrepreneur who also served as mayor of Columbus, harnessed a small portion of the river between an island (now in the Bibb pond) and the Alabama shore. A small dam there powered his Rock Island Paper Mill, which also used water, from the river. Union troops destroyed this facility in 1865, and it was never rebuilt. This site is in the extreme northwest corner of the boundaries of Bibb City.

The promotional plat for the North Highlands Improvement and Manufacturing Company touted the beauty of the land:

"Tourists who have done all the wonders of this country and the old world, freely concede that neither upon the Rhine, the Rhone, the "Blue Danube" or the famed Palisades of the Hudson River, is there a continuous drive of the same length, equal in natural beauty and' ever changing variety to the magnificent Boulevard Drive of the North Highlands along the winding banks, of the gleaming Chattahoochee, curving in and out among the emerald islands and churning its waters into white mists and snowy foam as it dashes between and around the gigantic rocks that vainly impeded its onward rush. "

Boulevard Drive probably predated the company's development of the area. It wound its way along the crest of the riverside hills overlooking the turbulent river from about the present 25th Street to the northern reaches of Bibb City, and picnickers probably used it before the 1890s to reach Lovers' Leap and the rock boulders along the riverbank.

The North Highlands Company planned to develop the area as an up-scale residential neighborhood and a recreational area. It rivaled John Flournoy's Wildwood Park and his real estate developments in the Wynnton area, east of Columbus.

The North Highlands Railroad Company operated streetcars to North Highlands Park. The trolley line ran from downtown up 2nd Avenue to just past the present 3rd Street and then angled westward along the present Hemlock Drive and then just north of the bridge in the bottom, veered to the northeast and somehow climbed the hill. It then looped around what are now Beechwood Circle and perhaps some of Spruce Street in a counter-clockwise direction and returned southward on the same track.

Gunby Jordan, John J. Hill, and John F. Hanson instigated the creation of the Bibb Barn and Mill when they began purchasing land for these facilities in 1897. Gunby Jordan, the city's most dynamic businessman at that time, owned banking, insurance, and real estate interests, and was revitalizing the Eagle & Phenix Mill, one the town's oldest mills which had slipped into receivership in 1896.

John J. Hill, the former Eagle & Phenix company engineer and an inventor of one of the first automatic fire sprinkler, apparently argued that, a dam at this site-the first new hydro facility on the Chattahoochee since the 1840s-was feasible. Unfortunately, Hill died in 1898, just as the project was being implemented.

Major John F. Hanson of Macon, along with Hugh M. Comer of Savannah, established the Bibb Mill in an abandoned freight house of the Central of Georgia Railroad in Macon. Their company added two more Macon factories and mills in Porterdale and Taylor by 1898. Comer and Hanson, who both started their business careers as cotton merchants, were also major investors of the Central of Georgia Railroad, with both of them later serving as its president.

Illustrative of the centrality of waterpower in this Chattahoochee River venture, Jordan and Hanson created the Columbus Power Company, in 1898, and it purchased the property they had assembled in 1897: 1Jordan and Hanson recruited the thirty-five year old W. C. Bradley, the city's most successful rising businessman. Bradley and Jordan already shared similar banking interests and investments in the Eagle & Phenix.

From its inception, these men designed the Bibb to be the premier mill in Columbus. They did not envision simply, building a single mill at Lover's Leap. This complex project, which doubled the volume of waterpower being used in Columbus, involved constructing a dam, two powerhouses-one for the Bibb and one for Columbus Power Compan- and two mills. The Bibb Mill used mechanical power from its powerhouse, and W. C. Bradley's Columbus Manufacturing' Company (several blocks to the south) consumed some of the electricity produced by Columbus Power Company.

Called the first large dam building in the South, its construction began in 1899 and was still incomplete where it partially collapsed under high water in 1901. The entire operation began in 1902.

The new dam expanded local textile production, as Columbus Power Company became the city's major wholesale supplier of electricity. In addition to driving the Bibb and Columbus Manufacturing Company, electricity from the Columbus Power Company powerhouse, by 1906, turned the spindles in Swift Spinning Mill, located on Second Avenue a couple of blocks south of the Bibb. Also, the increased availability of electricity led to the development of Perkins Hosiery Mill in east Columbus. Gunby Jordan invested heavily in this firm.

In 1906, the Bibb Company quit the power business and sold the Columbus Power Company and the outer electrical-producing powerhouse to Stone & Webster, a Boston-based utilities, company for $1,000,000. P Stone & Webster already controlled the Columbus [Street] Railroad Company facility at the City Mills dam, ,which produced power for streetcars, streetlights, and retail electricity for homes and businesses. Stone & Webster organized The Columbus Electric & Power Company; Jordan and Bradley served as directors of the new company.

The Bibb Company retained control of the smaller wheelhouse adjacent to the Georgia bank; it provided power to the mill by means of a series of rope drives. This system only drove the original section of the mill, but it continued to operate a small amount of spinning machinery until 1954. Electrical generators, for the use of the mill and the village, were added, to this powerhouse in 1903.