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For decades, Draper Corp. loomed over Hopedale
The Milford Daily News
HOPEDALE With sounds of an excavator in the distance picking up tons of dirt, local historian Dan Malloy recounted growing up in town when the dominant force was Draper Corp.
Not only was the business the lifeblood of the town, providing 4,200 jobs at its peak and award-winning housing, the factory was also, at one point, the biggest automatic loom maker in the world, producing more than 2,000 looms a month, according to another local historian, Linda Hixon and Milford Daily News archives.
“They sold huge numbers of them,” said Malloy, 79, during a gloomy afternoon last week as construction crews were at work tearing down what was once a 1.8 million-square-foot facility. “The loom was their main product.”