Jones Mill Ruins
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Built post-Civil War by R. H. Jones as a saw and woodworking mill to support his carriage, buggy, phaeton, and wagon business. Eventually furniture and caskets were also produced.

The ruins lie mainly immediately below an old road cut in to a fairly steep backslope, and face southwest. The road is supported by a rock wall, part of which forms the back wall of the structure.

There is a large room at the northwest end of the structure and a smaller room at the southeast end. The wall supporting the road extends a bit southeast of the smaller room.

On the northwest end of the complex, a sluice and 3 large spikes mark the location of the mill wheel. Presumably that room housed the main machinery.

Both rooms are raised above a box-shaped depression, 2-feet deep, and 4-feet wide, walled and floored with rock, that runs the length of the complex. It may have housed some set of shafts, belts, and pulleys below the floor.

The mill may also have been multi-story. The remaining ruins may have effectively been the basement, with the main part of the mill having been a wooden structure above it.

The structure may have extended over and across the road, as the remains of a few small walls line the backslope above the road, behind the larger room.

In addition to the woodworking mill, the complex was alleged to have eventually housed a grist mill and store.

The grist mill may have been run by the same wheel and occupied the southeast end, in and above the smaller room.

The store may have occupied an excavation above the road, above the rock wall supporting the road to the southeast of the smaller room.

The excavation may have originally provided fill dirt for the road itself.

Of course, all of this is speculation. I cant find any reference to or photographs of the mill when it was in operation.

Links:
Bartow County Business Hall of Fame (Colonel Robert Harris Jones)
Jones Mill (AKA Lewis Mill)

Coords: 34.239949 N -84.681337 W

GPX Downloads: Waypoint

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