Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 January 1918 — OLD MILL AGAIN IN USE [ARTICLE]

OLD MILL AGAIN IN USE

Only Water Mill Now in Operation In Country Grinds Out Wheat Flour. Jeffersonville, Ind. Whole wheat flour is being manufactured at a mill In Clarke county which is 100 years old, and is said to be the only water mill now in operation in the country. The mill, which is three miles from Charlestown, is known as the Tunnel mill. It is so called because at a point in Fourteen Mile creek a tunnel has been cut through solid rock, 94 feet below the summit of the hill it penetrates and the mill race is fed through this tunnel, five feet wide and six feet high, to the oversfiot water wheel erected iff the mill below. The mill is of frame, 50 by 35 feet in size, and the wheel has a diameter of 20 feet, though it is said there is room for one of 26 feet. The tunnel is 300 feet long. It was built from 1814 to 1817 by Johjh Work, a Clarke county pioneer and mechanical genius, who with gunpowder and his rude bearing tools, cut .two’ tunnels, one from each end, that met exactly in the center, the work Costing him, it is recorded, $3,000. The mill has run practically ever since, and the grinding is done by big stone buhrs.