A riveted steel sphere about 30 feet tall and an estimated 40 tons turned up this month as crews tore down the shuttered paper mill in Canton, North Carolina. Old documents date the vessel to 1936. Nobody working the demolition had realized it was a ball, because most of its curve was buried below grade.
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The discovery sits at the odd intersection of industrial archaeology and heavy construction. A storage tank is a plain piece of plant equipment, yet this one has a shape, an age and a mass that set it apart from everything else being cleared from the site, and it is now headed for a second life as something the public may be able to visit rather than scrap.
A 1936 pressure vessel hidden underground
The find was reported in a short item by Jessica Esther Saraceni for Archaeology Magazine on October 14, which drew on an earlier WLOS report from Canton published two days earlier on October 12. The sphere is about 30 feet tall, made of riveted steel plates, and weighs roughly 40 tons by the estimate of Luke Williams, director of engineering at Two Banks Development, the firm redeveloping the property.
Williams explained why the team missed its true form. The crew had assumed a cylindrical tank, since only a sliver showed above ground. Williams said that if the vessel were encased in concrete and raised onto 10-foot stands, a person could walk underneath and see only a small part of it. The first attempt to pull it out went badly: an excavator accidentally tore part of the steel, which was the moment the real shape became clear.
An acid ball for cooking wood chips
Williams went through the mill’s records, which place the sphere’s construction in 1936 and suggest it may have been fabricated at the mill itself, and concluded the sphere was probably built on site to store acid used in making paper, a vessel often called an acid ball. WLOS reported that it held alum, a liquid used in paper processing, and that it was kept under pressure. In the words of Williams, “It was used in the chemical cooking of woodchips, and this was the storage of that chemical.”
Williams told WLOS he believes this is the only sphere on the property but cannot be certain while demolition continues. A sphere of the same height and weight, found by Kimberly Ferguson, the Two Banks office manager, already stands on display in Bellingham, Washington.
Canton’s mill and what comes next for the site
The mill that housed it has a long and painful history in Canton, a mountain town in the western part of the state. Owned at its end by Pactiv Evergreen, it closed in June 2023 after 115 years of operation, directly affecting more than 1,000 workers according to the World Resources Institute. The same account notes that Pactiv Evergreen announced a deal in May 2024 to sell the site to Spirtas Worldwide, a St. Louis demolition and environmental remediation company, and that the floodplain location complicates reuse.
When the closure was first confirmed in March 2023, Fox Carolina reported that officials expected about 1,300 positions to be eliminated and that the mill had operated for over 100 years. WLOS says roughly a year of demolition is now underway, and Two Banks is redeveloping the land with flood resiliency as its main focus. Canton has also received funding to buy part of the former mill site for a wastewater treatment plant. Because demolition is still running, more of the property remains to be cleared, and Williams told WLOS he believes the sphere is the only one on the site but is not certain, so the inventory of what the mill left behind is not yet final.
For the sphere, Williams said the team is consulting the community on how to fold it into the new development. It is currently set aside, awaiting its final location, and the ideas on the table include placing it as art or a history piece along the planned riverwalk and greenway. Ferguson called it “a fantastic piece to put there,” while Williams said the sphere reminds him of the Incredibles movie. He added that he thinks it is good for folks to share such objects, because doing so makes a connection between a town and its working past. Ferguson’s Bellingham find also settles one question of presentation: because a same-sized sphere is already on display there, Canton will not simply copy that approach, and the final treatment stays open until the community weighs in.
North Carolina has other examples of mills finding new roles. Archaeology Magazine has previously covered a North Carolina cotton mill that was used for other purposes during the Civil War, a reminder that industrial buildings often outlive the businesses that built them. In Canton, the 1936 sphere may end up as the most visible remnant of a mill whose workers included third-generation employees, such as Terry Mease, who retired in 2014 after 43 years.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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