Watkins Woolen Mill State Historic Site

Waltus L. Watkins started Bethany in 1839 as a small livestock farm in northeast Clay County. By 1870 it had grown into a 3,660-acre farm and factory that he styled a plantation: a 1,240-acre home farm, tenant farms, a brick kiln, gristmill and sawmills, a blacksmith shop and houses for the mill and farm workers. Watkins had trained in Kentucky textile mills, and in 1860 he built a three-story mill that spun wool into yarn and wove it into cloth, blankets and shawls.

The 1976 National Historic Landmark nomination records the foundations of "some 9-10 cabins for weavers and slaves" behind the mill. The federal slave schedules for Clay County list three enslaved people under the name W. L. Watkins in 1850: a woman of 32, a man of 19 and a boy of 2. The 1860 schedule, taken in Washington Township on June 26, lists three under that name: a woman of 55, a man of 35 and a woman of 20, with one slave house. The schedules recorded age and sex, not names.

The mill ran at capacity until 1886, two years after Watkins died, and the family stayed until 1945. Nearly all of its machinery is still in the building, including the 65-horsepower steam engine, and Missouri State Parks calls it the only 19th-century textile mill in the United States with its original machinery intact. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1966. The octagonal Franklin school and Mount Vernon church stand nearby, and the adjoining park has a 3.8-mile paved trail around its lake.