Glade Creek Grist Mill

From West Virginia (WV) Cyclopedia

Fayette County: 10 m SE of Fayetteville, WV

The Glade Creek Grist Mill, or Babcock Mill, located within Babcock State Park, provides corn- and flour-milling demonstrations for park visitors and fresh corn meal and buckwheat flour for purchase. It is among the most-photographed historical sites in West Virginia and appears on greeting cards, jigsaw puzzles, and as wallpaper sets for murals.

The Babcock mill is located on Glade Creek near the former site of Cooper's Mill and across the creek from the park's restaurant and administration building. According to the West Virginia Division of Tourism, the mill stands as a "living monument" to the more-than-500 such mills which were milling flour in West Virginia at the turn of the 20th century. The age of gristmilling in West Virginia ended in the early 1900s when railroads began to provide mass-produced flour, eliminating the time-consuming process of transporting grain to the

The Glade Creek Grist Mill was completed in 1976 and incorporated parts of three West Virginia mills. Its basic structure, according to the division, is based on that of the Stoney Creek Gristmill, which was located near Campbelltown, WV, in Pocahontas County, and was carefully dismantled and moved piecemeal to Babcock. The mill's overshot wheel was salvaged from the Spring Run Grist Mill, practically destroyed in a fire, formerly located near Petersburg, WV, in Grant County. Other parts for the mill were rescued from the Onego Grist Mill, formerly located near Seneca Rocks, WV, in Pendleton County.