24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Canton, NC

Canton is the second-largest town in Haywood County, located about 17 miles west of Asheville on both sides of the Pigeon River.

Canton was founded in 1889 as Buford, then renamed Vinson, then Pigeon Ford in 1891, before taking the name Canton in 1893.

The town is named for Canton, Ohio, the source of the steel used to build the bridge across the Pigeon River.

By 1790 Jonathan McPeters was already farming the banks of the Pigeon River at the site where Canton developed.

The 2020 census counted 4,422 people in Canton, up from 4,227 in 2010.

Construction of the Champion Fibre Company pulp mill began in 1906, and when it opened in 1908 it had about 1,000 employees and transformed Canton from a village of about 350 people into a mill town.

The Canton mill was the first in the world to make white pulp from chestnut wood, separating out tannin that was sold to the leather industry.

Champion built a company neighborhood of 60 homes for mill workers that became known as Fibreville.

The Garden Creek archeological site, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, sits on the south side of the Pigeon River about seven miles west of Canton.

After 115 years of operation under a succession of owners, the paper mill — by then Pactiv Evergreen — closed permanently in 2023, eliminating roughly 1,050 jobs in the town.