{"nrhp_refnum":"83003316","name":"Zirkle Mill","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"W of Quicksburg on VA 42","address_restricted":false,"city":"Quicksburg","county":"Shenandoah County","state":"VA","lat":38.713957564000054,"lon":-78.72547460699997,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1983-02-10","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Industry","Commerce","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["state"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A 2½-story frame merchant flour mill on a raised limestone rubble basement at the southern edge of Forestville, near Quicksburg, Shenandoah County, Virginia, built before 1815 (ca. 1815) by Andrew Zirkle, Sr., beside Holman's Creek.","why_significant":"The mill is presented as a significant artifact of the Shenandoah Valley's 19th-century flour manufacturing industry and a survivor of a fast-disappearing building form. Its design follows the merchant mill pattern in Oliver Evans's 1795 millwright's guide. It retains well-preserved milling machinery spanning the early 19th century to the 1920s, showing the shift from burr mill to roller mill. It also survived the Civil War intact and operated until the mid-1950s.","narrative":"Zirkle Mill is a 2½-story frame flour mill built into a hillside beside Holman's Creek at Forestville, near Quicksburg in Shenandoah County, Virginia. Erected before 1815 by Andrew Zirkle, Sr., it sits on a limestone rubble foundation, with post-and-beam construction, an overshot iron wheel and a gable roof of standing-seam metal. Its design follows the merchant mill pattern illustrated in Oliver Evans's 1795 handbook, which local millers were among the first in Virginia to adopt. Jacob Bowers ran the mill profitably from the early 1830s until 1852 and laid out the village of Forestville in 1838. The building escaped destruction during the Civil War and kept operating until the mid-1950s. Inside, machinery from the early 19th century through the 1920s records the change from burr milling to roller milling. The mill is now preserved through adaptive use as a furniture workshop.","period_of_significance":"Ca. 1815","architect_builder":"Unknown (built by Andrew Zirkle, Sr., according to the narrative)","architectural_style":null,"criteria":[],"status_note":"Milling ceased in the mid-1950s; the building is in excellent structural condition, occupied, and converted to a furniture-making workshop.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:51:58.094944-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/7/6836/41683607/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_VA/83003316.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/83003316/9290552a4e-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/83003316/9290552a4e-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Robert B. Andrews","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Milling_stones_of_the_Historic_Andrew_Zirkle_Mill_in_Forestville,_VA.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Robert B. Andrews</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Milling_stones_of_the_Historic_Andrew_Zirkle_Mill_in_Forestville,_VA.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/41683607","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zirkle_Mill","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8072770"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/virginia/shenandoah-county/zirkle-mill-83003316/"}