Society for the Preservation of Old Mills SPOOM Mid-Atlantic Chapter | Eastern NC Now

    Many of our old mills have become homes, cafes, or fallen to the ravages of the water that powered them. The ones that survive continue to grind corn or have been modified to charge batteries or some ingenious design.

    I took these photos over 30 years ago and I believe three are gone. Stone Mountain Park maintains the other.

    Mills are certainly beautiful but let's not overlook the engineering of the water supply.

    Water supply:

In this photo, you see a 24 inch water supply pipe coming out of the ground and over to the top of the wheel. The dam is about 100 yards to the left.

    I will discuss the engineering after the last photo in this article.

    Stone Mountain Park, GA.


    Water supply engineering is obviously important and not difficult in the Mountains where the streams flow fast pace downhill to small mills. In the low lands, a dam will flood a hundred acres of farm land and if the factor is large there will need to be gates geared for constant flow.

    I use present tense because mills are not outdated. Many are in operation today to generate electric power supply.

    It is easy to install a wheel in a stream to charge batteries.

    In summary, Mills are beautiful especially when flowers are in bloom or the trees are in full color but take time to go inside and look at the belts and gears.