DUANE
Duane's take
The marker's the authority here, and I'm just the one tellin' it — so let's talk about Chadwick's Mill. Three miles north of where you're sitting right now, there's a spot along a river that used to be one of the busiest, most beloved places in Lampasas County. And it all started in 1874, when Henry A.
Chadwick and his son Milam decided to build something that would last. And build they did. We're not talkin' a rough-hewn shack by the water.
These men put up a sawmill, a flour mill, and a cotton gin — all of it, right there together. The mill house and the gin house? Sandstone.
Solid sandstone. They threw an oak dam clear across the river, sturdy enough to hold back the current and put it to work. Then they chiseled — chiseled, by hand — a millrace right into the sandstone to channel that water down to the millstones.
You want to talk about commitment to a project, there it is. Now here's the part that'll tell you something about pioneer life. If you needed your grain ground or your cotton ginned, you rode out to Chadwick's Mill.
And then you waited. Not an hour. Not an afternoon.
You might wait several days for your turn. That's just how it was — the mill was that busy, and folks were that patient, because what else were you going to do? Well, Henry and Milam had an answer for that too.
Somebody had the good sense to put a fish trap right there in the millrace. So while you were waitin', you could pull your supper out of the same channel that was grindin' your flour. Food and sport, the marker calls it.
That right there is what you'd call a vertically integrated waiting experience. The word got around. People liked it out there.
The scenery was something. The water was runnin'. And by around 1900, Chadwick's Mill had grown into a full-on resort destination.
A hotel went up. A dance platform. Hundreds of campers rolled in to enjoy that scenic stretch of river.
What had started as a working mill had become the place to be in Lampasas County on a summer weekend. But the river had its own ideas. In 1915, the course of that river changed.
And when it did, it took the mill's power source right along with it. The dam, the millrace, the whole reason the thing worked — all of it rendered useless by a river that simply decided to go a different way. Chadwick's Mill was abandoned.
All that sandstone is still out there, three miles north. The river moved on. The mill couldn't follow.
What the marker says
(Site three miles north) Famous pioneer sawmill, flour mill, and cotton gin. Built 1874 by Henry A. Chadwick and son Milam. A sturdy oak dam across river supplied power. A millrace chiseled in sandstone channeled water to millstones. Mill and gin house were also sandstone. A fish trap in millrace offered food and sport to customers, who often had to wait several days for a turn at the mill. This scenic spot grew to be a popular resort around 1900, with hotel and dance platform. Attracted hundreds of campers. Change in course of river, 1915, forced mill to be abandoned. (1970)