{"nrhp_refnum":"90001612","name":"Borneman Mill","other_names":["Stauffer Mill"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"Off PA 100 SW of Clayton, Washington Township","address_restricted":false,"city":"Bally","county":"Berks County","state":"PA","lat":40.41564355400004,"lon":-75.57738478508531,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1990-11-08","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Industry","Engineering","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A small farm gristmill on a dairy farm in the limestone \"Butter Valley\" of Washington Township near Bally, Berks County, Pennsylvania, with a stone farmhouse, stone bank barn and stone smokehouse. The mill is a two-story frame building whose post-and-beam construction is covered in vertical board siding.","why_significant":"The nomination argues the mill is a rare surviving example of a \"farm mill\" that used water power to run milling, threshing and other farm machinery for a single farm. It is described as the only known farm mill remaining in situ in the county. Its cable drive linking the mill to the barn is cited as a notable power system.","narrative":"Borneman Mill sits on a dairy farm in the limestone valley near Bally, in Washington Township, Berks County. It is a two-story frame mill with post-and-beam framing, vertical board siding and a stone foundation, built after 1860 and believed to have been put up by Andrew Stauffer, who bought the farm about 1860. The mill was powered by water from a dam fed by two streams. A cable drive, with pulleys roughly 300 feet apart, carried power from the water wheel to the threshing floor of the stone bank barn. Inside, gears, shafts and belts drove millstones, a cob breaker, an edge grinding stone and other machines. The farmhouse, barn and smokehouse are included because they operated together with the mill. The complex is significant as a rare survivor of a small farm mill, one of several once found along Route 100, and as an example of harnessing water power at the scale of a single farm. The water power system is no longer intact, and the dam was lost in a storm in the 1930s.","period_of_significance":"c.1810 1939","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Vernacular","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"The exterior is in fair condition and the interior is in fair condition; the water power system is no longer intact.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-haiku-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.1-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 17:11:37.861109-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_PA/90001612.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/90001612/4ddd7cbd27-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/90001612/4ddd7cbd27-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Hshuvaeva","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Borneman_Mill_Farmhouse_01.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">Hshuvaeva</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:Borneman_Mill_Farmhouse_01.JPG"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/71992364","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borneman_Mill","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15203565"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/pennsylvania/berks-county/borneman-mill-90001612/"}