I had been meaning to get to this particular mill for a while and with rain and fog on this particular day(4-25-2010), it seemed like as good as time as any. Nice shooting weather. It would rain and stop, rain and stop all day long.
This mill was built somewhere between 1800 and 1830. It is located in Fawn Township near the intersection of Garvine Mill Road and PA route 425 (aka Woodbine Road). The water source is Bald Eagle Creek. What is puzzling is that on top of the hill behind the mill (the view you are seeing here) is a head race formed by the two foot high rock trough on the left, which would make this an overshot wheel but there is no current water source for the head race. It is said that the Bald Eagle Creek furnished water to the head race but given the elevation I would have to think the creek no longer takes that route. There isn’t a lot of information available on this mill on the Internet so I’ll have to hunt around a bit more to get the back story on how this mill operated and what happened to the original water source. The Miller’s house can be seen across the valley from the mill in the background.
The mill has also been known by the names Anderson’s Mill (named after the original builder) and Rock Run Mill (Not to be confused with the mill by the same name in Maryland). It was originally used to grind cornmeal and in later years became a cider mill. The original mill burned down in the late 1800′s and was rebuilt from the foundation up in the years 1899 & 1900. The original wheel on the mill was wooden and was replaced when the mill was rebuilt. The mill is currently owned by Gene Badders who is refurbishing the mill.
I shot this as seven bracketed RAW frames at .7 stop increments and then combined them into an HDR with Photomatix Pro and finally, tone mapped that image before bringing it into Photoshop CS5 and doing the B&W conversion with onOne’s Photo Tools.
