Grinnell Mill Historic District

Grinnell Mill and its surrounding complex sit in a forested valley on the Little Miami River near Yellow Springs, Ohio. The district includes a c. 1832 two-and-a-half-story mill on a limestone foundation, a 1,000-foot mill race, a dam, a miller's house from about 1830, the 1855-58 Grinnell House and a small family graveyard. The mill still holds its Leffel turbine, two millstones and many gears and pulleys. Brothers Andrew and Robert Moody sought permission to build a dam in 1811, and Frank Grinnell bought the mill in the 1860s. It ground grain, sawed lumber and processed agricultural lime until closing in 1937. In 1862 it sheltered freed slaves brought to Yellow Springs by Moncure Conway. The Grinnell family held it until 1948, when Antioch College acquired it for the Glen Helen preserve. The complex was listed as a rare, largely intact example of nineteenth-century milling and of the people connected with it.