1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rock Hill

ROCK HILL, a city of York county, South Carolina, U.S.A., 84 m. by rail N. of Columbia. Pop. (1890) 2744; (1900) 5485 (1706 negroes); (1910) 7216. Rock Hill is served by two lines of the Southern railway. It lies at an elevation of about 670 ft. above the sea. Among its buildings and institutions are the Federal Government Building, the City Hall, the Carnegie Library and the Winthrop Normal and Industrial College (chartered in 1891 and opened in 1894), a state institution for white girls. Cotton is the most important product of the surrounding country. The Catawba river, 5 m. distant, furnishes good water-power, and in a large power-plant electricity is generated for the city’s manufactories. Among the manufactures are cotton goods, cotton-seed oil, yarn, wagons and carriages, foundry and machine-shop products; and there are cotton gins, marble and stone works. The growth of the city has been almost entirely since the Civil War. Rock Hill was incorporated as a village in 1870, and was chartered as a city in 1892.