The Taylor Mill State Historic Site is a

state park State parks are parks or other protected areas managed at the sub-national level within those nations which use "state" as a political subdivision. State parks are typically established by a state to preserve a location on account of its natural ...

New Hampshire New Hampshire is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...

located in 71-acre

Ballard State Forest Ballard State Forest is a state forest of New Hampshire located in Derry, Rockingham County, in the southeast part of the state. The area of the park is . It includes the Taylor Mill Historic Site, an old sawmill, and Ballard Pond, which provide ...

Derry Derry, officially Londonderry (), is the second-largest city in Northern Ireland and the fifth-largest city on the island of Ireland. The name ''Derry'' is an anglicisation of the Old Irish name (modern Irish: ) meaning 'oak grove'. The ...

, Rockingham County, in the southeast part of the state. The site is created to protect the 1799 mill known as Taylor Up and Down Sawmill. The

sawmill A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes (dimensi ...

is in operation and is open for visitors on weekends during the summer. The site is located on Island Pond Road, east of the downtown of Derry.

History

Robert Taylor, an early owner of the sawmill, bought the land in 1799. The mill went in operation in the 1800s. It is unknown when it ceased operation. In 1939, the land was sold to Ernest Ballard. By that time, the original mill was scrapped, and Ballard bought a similar mill, which was disassembled, in

Sandown, New Hampshire Sandown is a town in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 6,548 at the 2020 census, up from 5,986 at the 2010 census. History Once part of Kingston, Sandown was incorporated as a separate town in 1756 by coloni ...

. Ballard and his wife spent two years assembling it and identifying missing parts. The most notable missing part was the

water wheel A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, often in a watermill. A water wheel consists of a wheel (usually constructed from wood or metal), with a number of blades or buckets ...

, which he ordered from a company in Pennsylvania. In 1953, Ernest Ballard donated the mill and the land to the state of New Hampshire in 1953. This property became

, and the pond above the mill is known as Ballard Pond.

Mill

The water wheel is in diameter and wide. The logs which can be sawed at the mill can not exceed in length and in diameter. The mill operates at 60 strokes per minute. By operation type, the mill is an up and down mill, which is a mechanized version of a usual saw. This is an outdated technology, which was replaced by water-powered

circular saw A circular saw is a power-saw using a toothed or abrasive disc or blade to cut different materials using a rotary motion spinning around an arbor. A hole saw and ring saw also use a rotary motion but are different from a circular saw. ''Cir ...

around 1825. Taylor Mill is one of the few examples of a surviving mill using this technology.

References

External links

Taylor Mill Historic Site
New Hampshire Department of Natural and Cultural Resources {{authority control State parks of New Hampshire Parks in Rockingham County, New Hampshire History of forestry in the United States Derry, New Hampshire