Advance Mills

Advance Mills is a small village in northern Albemarle County, Virginia, shaped around a dam on the North Fork of the Rivanna River. The Fray family arrived in 1833 and built nearly everything in the district, including mills, a general store, houses, barns and outbuildings. The district holds 23 contributing resources, among them a circa 1810 brick house now called Holly Tree Farm with a collection of original outbuildings, the 1909 Colonial Revival house Sunnybank, two I-houses that served as the merchant's and miller's homes, a bank barn, the dam and millrace, and a circa 1900 metal truss bridge moved here in 1943. The mill and the supply store burned in the 1940s, and their stone and concrete foundations remain. Together these resources show how building methods changed from 19th-century stone to 20th-century poured concrete, and how a self-sufficient rural commercial center operated. The village was listed for its architecture, commerce, industry and transportation history between 1810 and 1948.