Graniteville dates back to 1845 when
William Gregg built
the South's first large-scale
cotton mill in what became known as Graniteville. His paternalistic
mill town included 90 homes, several
boarding houses, six stores, two churches, and a school for the mill workers and their families. The community got its name because most of those original buildings were constructed of blue
granite. Gregg required the children of mill workers to attend the public school he instituted, and violators were fined. As such, Graniteville holds the distinction of having the first compulsory education system in the Southern United States. The
Graniteville Historic District was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places in 1978. On January 6, 2005, a
Norfolk Southern Railway freight train
struck a parked train on the spur leading to Avondale's Stevens Steam Plant. One of two train cars that were carrying liquid
chlorine ruptured, releasing a poisonous chlorine cloud. Nine people were killed, more than 550 injured, and more than 5,400 were displaced from their homes for more than a week. The town built a memorial in a small park at the intersection of Canal Street and Aiken Road, and on May 20, 2006, the memorial was dedicated to the people who died in the crash. In 2008, there were talks about incorporating the villages of Graniteville,
Vaucluse, and
Warrenville; as a result, the towns approved a referendum to vote on whether or not to incorporate. If approved, the municipality would have had an area of around . The referendum was defeated by a two-to-one margin in August 2008. ==Economy==