Giant Steel Ball Unearthed at North Carolina Mill Site

CANTON, NORTH CAROLINA—WLOS reports that the demolition of a paper mill in western North Carolina has revealed a 30-foot-tall sphere constructed of riveted steel in 1936. “If you could encase that in concrete and stand it up on 10-foot stands, you could walk underneath it and only see just a little bit of it, and so we never knew it was a round ball; we just thought it was a cylindrical tank,” said Luke Williams, an engineer in charge of the redevelopment of the site. The sphere weighs and estimated 40 tons, and was damaged when crews first tried to remove it. Williams has examined records from the paper mill and thinks the sphere may have been constructed on site to hold acid for paper processing. “It was used in the chemical cooking of woodchips, and this was the storage of that chemical, and so it was under pressure, so it was contained,” he said. Williams and his team are now talking with the community about ways to include the sphere in the new development. To read about excavations of a cotton mill in North Carolina that was put to other uses during the Civil War, go to “Cotton Mill, Prison, Main Street.”