Information Panel: Island Mills

The foundation of Island Mills, one of the earliest industries on the island lies before you.

NPS / Claire Hassler

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Sounds of turning millwheels and workers filling bags with freshly ground flour once filled the air here.

The foundation of Island Mills, one of the earliest (1824) industries on the island, lies before you. Each fall, the railroad brought wheat here from the Potomac and Shenandoah valleys to be ground into flour, packed into barrels, and shipped east to Baltimore.

Fire destroyed the original mill in 1839. Construction of a larger three-and-one-half story stone building followed the next year on the same site. Over the next 5 years ownership changed several times until Abraham Herr acquired the mill in 1844. Then known as Herr's Mill, it dwarfed the surrounding factories in Virginia and could produce $233,400 in flour annually, thirteen times the amount produced by the average flour mill in the United States in 1860.

By the outbreak of the Civil War, Herr owned all of Virginius Island. As a Northern supporter, he donated a large quantity of grain to Union soldiers stationed in the area in October 1861. A few days later, Confederates seized Harpers Ferry and torched Herr's flour mill. The flames completely gutted the building, but Herr escaped to the North.

Photo caption: Island Mills in 1857
Photo caption: A Federal troop train on Virginius Island in December 1864. The ruins of Herr's Mill, burned three years earlier by Confederate soldiers, stand at right.
Photo caption: An 1893 photograph of Herr's Mill ruins.