West Point on the Eno

West Point on the Eno is a city park of roughly 26 acres of meadow along the Eno River at Roxboro Road in Durham. It occupies the site of West Point, a mill community of about 300 families that grew around a gristmill established in 1778 at Shoemaker's Ford. Surviving elements include the c. 1843 McCown-Mangum House, a vernacular Greek Revival farmhouse with its kitchen in the basement; a c. 1880 board-and-batten pack house where photographer Hugh Mangum had a darkroom; a log tobacco barn; and the ruins of a late eighteenth-century house site with its chimney. The West Point Mill, rebuilt from early twentieth-century photographs, stands on the original mill foundation with its head and tail races. The mill ran from 1778 to 1942, longer than any of the 24 mills known on the river, and the property passed through owners who included legislators, justices of the peace and three Durham mayors. It is valued as a reminder of Durham's rural past.