In these days of environmental consciousness and the green movement, smokestacks are about as politically incorrect as you can get. But there was a time when they were a welcome sight, back when smoking was cool. Progress has snuffed out those stacks that once huffed and puffed around textile plants, of course. But dozens still stand tall, from New England to the Deep South, as a reminder of the industry’s heyday – when the mill whistle marked time and billowing smoke signaled hope and prosperity for many a textile village.

They once were a brick mason’s dream – or nightmare – depending on his level of height aversion. Smokestacks were needed for steam power, to release the thick black smoke created by burning coal to heat the boilers. They were built to precise specifications to provide adequate natural draft for a furnace. And there was a science behind it. Hotter air inside a smokestack is less dense than the air outside, which leads to a pressure deferential between the air at the bottom of the smokestack and that outside, causing outside air to be drawn up into the smokestack and moving air through the attached furnace at an increased rate. This “stack effect” makes sense to me – I think. (Probably more so to Bill Nye the Science Guy.)

These changeless chimneys are quite a sight, even today when they’re not blowing off steam. When you see one, then another, then another, you’re not sure if they’re brothers, but you know they’re kin. When I see one, it beckons me to reach for my camera. These bodacious behemoths are always willing to have their picture made, and will strike perpendicular poses against an ever-changing sky – sometimes oranges and reds, sometimes grays and blacks, sometimes blues and whites.

From my office window just outside of the Greenville, S.C. city limits, I can spot no fewer than three of these iconic landmarks, one that’s part of this property at historic Monaghan Mills. It rises 248 feet above the ground, or about seven stories, and is more than 100 years old. In a past textile life, I actually witnessed the implosion of three smokestacks – one at Fieldcrest Cannon’s Concord, N.C., plant in the mid-’90s and twin stacks that were felled simultaneously at Pillowtex’s headquarters in Kannapolis, N.C., in 2006. Both incredible sights left me with a sense of loss for my former employer and this industry.

Smokestacks served their purpose for many years and, thankfully, enough remain to remind our ancestors and us just how much this industry was woven into America’s economic fabric in the 19th and 20th centuries. A smokestack industry no more, textile manufacturing is alive and well in this country – even after the deck was stacked against it for many years.