Published: June 15, 2009 07:40 am      

Hanford Mills offers history lesson with impact on today

The water wheel stops the conversation at Hanford Mills in East Meredith.

As educational as it is to talk about the place's purpose, watching the water wheel start to turn is as much fun as watching the guys on "Mythbusters" blow stuff up. Which is to say, a lot of fun.

The air is easily 15 degrees cooler in the mill's cellar, which is where the wheel is. It's a labyrinth of pullies and belts and gears, like walking into the belly of some huge, cool beast. Where its heart would be, sits a cement-mixer-sized steel water wheel, installed in the 1920s to replace the wooden one.

Bob Adair, an interpreter at the museum, pushes a lever upstairs. A gate opens and you can hear the water trickle into the topmost layer of the wheel. At first, it's about as enthralling as watching a top loading washing machine.

But when that first trough fills, water spills into the next trough, which fills faster. The wheel starts to turn, slowly at first. Then a little faster, then faster.

The volume rises as the gears surrounding you start to turn. Belts start to move. The huge, cool beast wakes up and you finally understand how a simple creek can create more than enough power to plane lumber and grind grain.

"It's amazing what you can do with just the weight of water," says Alan Rowe, Hanford Mills' research and preservation coordinator.

Starting in the 1840s, the weight of water brought the Industrial Revolution to this heart of dairy country. With water diverted from Kortright Creek, D. J. Hanford was able to drive the wheel that powered the saw blades, which carved out the butter tub covers, tool handles and milk bottle boxes that the farmers around him needed. Water also ground grain at the mills, which farmers would feed to the cows that gave the milk that made the dairy business possible in the first place.

While the railroad, which arrived in 1800, had made East Meredith economically viable, it's the mill that made the town thrive. The mill, Rowe says, "stabilized the community and kept its character intact."

It's an old model that is gaining ground again as we try to "green" modern life. Fortunately, this museum is overflowing with historic ideas that could have new applications.

Hanford Mills is more than just its waterwheel. It's also a functioning sawmill, where visitors can see how the milling equipment worked. It sounds tame until you see the tools themselves, many of which look like something used to torture James Bond.

Rest assured that all of the visitors are at a safe distance. Still, you're close enough to be amazed that anyone survived working at a sawmill, much less that the employees lived long enough for the Mills to thrive.

The property also houses a forge, a lumber shed, an icehouse, where the blocks removed from the annual February ice harvest stay frozen until mid-autumn, the John Hanford house and the Horace Hanford Retirement Office, aka a repurposed chicken coop. But more important than the buildings are their stories and the insight they can offer.

"It is a microstory of a macro thing," explains Executive Director Liz Callahan. "This happened everywhere. We represent a very common rural American story."

The story that the museum tells is one about power generation, which may not be the sexiest topic but is at the core of a lot of our current global concerns. Figuring out an achievable, reliable and sustainable source for energy is not a new problem.

During the last decade, Callahan and company have been working to bring steam power back to the mill so that the story can start to include the pros and cons of it as well. The Hanfords used steam engines at the mill starting in the 1880s, so this restoration is based on what used to be on the property. The challenge lay in rediscovering the practical knowledge these potentially explosive engines require.

"The number of really committed, really eccentric, really interesting, really knowledgeable people who have been involved just shows what many people can contribute and do," Callahan says.

The restoration of the horizontal steam engine, which looks like a Victorian interpretation of Christian Bale's Batmobile, was more than a technical exercise. Callahan sees the museum as a repository for more than physical stuff. It is a place for the community to continue sharing its assets.

"You network that knowledge, those resources _ some of it is money but a lot of it is more esoteric," she says. "This whole coordination of all of this obscure yet important knowledge is something that plays into virtually everything we do here. The whole concept of re-creating this history, accurately, safely, is always so exciting.

"We can talk about why they used these power sources and how they used them. We can talk about what's involved with water power and renewable energy. We can talk about the labor and the safety issues involving steam and how much more reliable it was. Just like people talk today about the energy grid today and wind power," Callahan says.

"You have to step back and see the bigger picture. That's why I became a historian. I really think that we have so much to learn about the challenges we are facing today from our own history. If we really spend a little bit more time on our history lessons, a lot of these challenges will be a little clearer."

Fortunately, the water wheel makes the history lesson an unforgettable one.