Even though manufacturing usually took a secondary role in the economy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it assumed a great importance in those areas which were without an adequate internal system of transportation to import the necessities of life and in which there existed an abundance of water to supply the power needed for heavy industry. Since such a situation existed in the northeastern area of the upcountry, the manufacturing of iron became the major industry .... By the time the Continental Congress declared Independence and the Revolution began, the northeastern part of Ninety Six District (Cherokee County, the eastern area of Spartanburg County, and the northern most region of York County) was already being called "The Iron District." The capacity of the iron foundries located here to produce weapons soon attracted the attention of the British Army. Among the iron works capable of doing serious damage to the King's efforts were those of Colonel William Wofford , which were located near Spartanburg, and William Hill's Furnaces in York District. In an effort to put an end to their production of armaments, "Bloody Bill" Cunningham burned Wofford's foundry and a force of British Regulars led by Captain Huck destroyed Hill's establishment. His slaves and livestock were scattered and his partner, Colonel Isaac Hayne, was summarily executed. In spite of these repressive measures, numerous small Catalan forges continued to produce iron in the Up-Country.

Shortly after the War of 1812 three large companies--the South Carolina Manufacturing Company, the Nesbitt Manufacturing Company, and the Kings Mountain Iron Company--had gained a control of the industry which they maintained until after the War Between the States. ....James Augustus Black (b. 1793) founded the Kings Mountain Iron Works (after 1812) and began smelting iron on the western bank of King's Creek, a short distance above the present-day crossing of U.S. Highway 5 .... The Kings Mountain Iron Company was the earliest organised major iron manufacturing unit in the area. Although the exact date of its organisation is unknown, it was sometime prior to 1822 that Jacob Stroup and Edmund Fewell began the industry near the mouth of Kings Creek, for it was in that year that Fewell died, a major flood on King's Creek destroyed the furnaces, and the company's assets were sold at public auction.

A number of small iron foundaries, such as those of William Hill on the Catawba River in York District and Adam Carruth on the Reedy River in Greenville, supplied the local markets with nails and munitions in the early nineteenth century, but by the antebellum era only three chartered iron companies, the South Carolina Manufacturing Company, the Nesbitt Manufacturing Company, and the Kings Mountain Iron Company, all located in the upper Broad River valley, were in operation in the Upcountry.

... Located near the mouth of Kings Creek in western York District, the Kings Mountain Iron Company operated from 1837 to 1867. Capitalized at $97,000 in 1860, the Kings Mountain Iron Company was probably the most successful of the Upcountry iron companies. In 1856, the company paid a 7 per cent dividend, and its largest stockholder (William H. Gist) declared that the "company now is in very good condition" with its assets far outstripping its debts.

The list of investors in these iron companies reads like a Who's Who of South Carolina planters and capitalists. Franklin H. Elmore, Benjamin T. Elmore, Wade Hampton II, Pierce Butler, Judge Bayliss Earle, and former Spartanburg Congressman Wilson Nesbitt all invested in the Nesbitt Manufacturing Company and all shared in its financial embarrassment. Greenville mill owner Vardry McBee, textile entrepreneur Simpson Bobo, and Spartanburg merchant Gabriel Cannon all invested heavily in the South Carolina Manufacturing Company, while William H. Gist, George McDuffie, and John Bryce were the largest shareholders in the Kings Mountain Iron Company.

Bouyed by sales of iron to companies building the Upcountry railroads, the Kings Mountain Iron Company and the South Carolina Manufacturing Company flourished briefly during the late 1840s and early 1850s, but by the end of the latter decade these companies struggled to hold their own. The problems of the Upcountry iron industry during the late 1850s were three-fold. All three companies relied heavily on slave labor, often hiring slaves from nearby planters on a part-time basis, and used whites only as supervisors or in a few skilled positions. Thus both the rising cost of hiring slaves and the growing opportunity cost of holding slaves out of agricultural labor hurt the iron companies immensely. Second, the very railroads whose construction had given the industry a temporary boost ultimately hurt the Upcountry iron companies by bringing cheaper iron from Northern anthracite furnaces into markets previously protected by geographic isolation. Finally, and perhaps less important, the Kings Mountain Iron and South Carolina Manufacturing companies found it difficult to raise capital because of the well-publicised woes of the Nesbitt Company. In 1856, William H. Gist, who owned over $30,000 worth of Kings Mountain Iron Company stock, complained that "owing to the almost universal failure of joint stock companies in the State" stock in the Kings Mountain works was selling at only fifty cents on the dollar even though the company was making a profit and paying dividends.