Laurel Mills Historic District

Laurel Mills is a small village in southeastern Rappahannock County, Virginia, laid out along Laurel Mills Road beside the Thornton River. It grew around a gristmill and sawmill, and its post office opened in 1847. Cornelius Smith, the first postmaster, built a Greek Revival-influenced I-house that was later updated in the Italianate style and enlarged in the Queen Anne style by the Hawkins family. The village also includes a row of mid-19th-century workers' houses, a Gothic Revival mill manager's house from about 1870, and a brick Italianate store built in 1877 that still operates as a general store. The Rappahannock Woolen Mill was rebuilt around 1900 after a fire and closed in 1927. Its roofless brick and concrete ruins survive. The district was recognized as a cohesive milling community that remains much as it appeared when the mill closed, with later additions limited to a 1971 ranch house and a 1970s bridge.