This place has haunted me ever since I first saw photos of it and I knew I had to try and capture it myself so with rain in the forecast for Pennsylvania, I decided to make the eight hour drive down to Babcock State Park in Clifftop, West Virginia and shoot this wonderful mill surrounded in full Fall foliage. When I got there it was drizzling and by the time I decided to move on to the next mill on my list, it was raining heavily. As I climbed up out of the park, it began to snow at a pretty good pace. I guess Summer is officially over :–)
The Glade Creek Grist Mill is a new mill that was completed in 1976 at Babcock State Park. Fully operable, this mill was built as a re-creation of one which once ground grain on Glade Creek long before Babcock became a state park. Known as Cooper’s Mill, it stood on the present location of the park’s administration building parking lot.
The mill was created by combining parts and pieces from three mills which once dotted the state. The basic structure of the mill came from the Stoney Creek Grist Mill which dates back to 1890. It was dismantled and moved piece by piece to Babcock from a spot near Campbelltown in Pocahontas County. After an accidental fire destroyed the Spring Run Grist Mill near Petersburg, Grant County, only the overshot water wheel could be salvaged. Other parts for the mill came from the Onego Grist Mill near Seneca Rocks in Pendleton County.
For more information on visiting the Mill and Babcock State Park, visit their web site.
I shot this as nine exposure bracketed RAW frames at 1/3 stop variance, then combined into an HDR and tone mapped in Photomatix Pro. I used the Singh-Ray Vari-N-Duo filter to knock the light down by about five stops allowing for a slower shutter speed on each bracketed shot resulting in some nice milky water effects.
