August 26, 2024 Quite a Ride

Places

Chain Mill Falls, Hanover Township

This unusual photo, found in the JCHS archives, shows an unidentified man suspended in a chair attached to a large chain through a 35-foot shaft that starts in the creek near the overhang and lowers a person down below the overhang. The photographer is unknown, but on the back of the photo is a note an application for a copyright was filed, but it’s not clear if it was for the chair lift or the photo itself.

The grist mill was powered by harnessing the energy of the water flowing over the falls. Built around 1815, William Gordon designed log chains attached to a large wheel suspended over the falls. Attached to the chain were more than 100 hollowed-out cow and bull horns that captured water as they went down the falls. The force of the filled horns turned the wheel, which acted like a cog and turned the millstones used to grind wheat and corn into flour.

Around 1830, Gordon increased the power of the mill by creating a 15-foot wide shaft from the top of the overhang upstream from the falls; the shaft extended 35 feet down to the open space below the overhang. Gordon got the idea for building the shaft after witnessing workers blasting and digging the cut for the railroad incline on the west side of Madison. He replaced the wooden wheel with a larger metal wheel and, using heavier iron chain, replaced the animal horns with large wooden buckets. The flow of the water into the buckets kept the wheel turning at a faster pace, with the buckets being sent over the falls and rotating into the cave and back to the top through the shaft. The improvements increased flour production at the mill. Customers would bring grain to grind into flour, with the mill owner taking one-quarter of the amount as a “toll.”

It was such a lucrative business that, in the 1850s, Gordon sold the mill to James Miller at a profit of $10,000, which would be equal to about $332,000 in today’s economy.

Some old-timers told stories of young men from Hanover College coming to the falls and daring each other to ride a barrel to the bottom. One miller observed such an incident and called the boys “idiots” for being so careless with their lives and told them their fathers were “wasting their money” sending them to school.

By the late 1800s, the mill closed when the stream began to run dry. One report stated that the “denuding” of the surrounding area contributed to the lack of water for the falls.

(Information obtained from research files in the Frank Bird Collection here at the Research Library and Archives.)

Phyllis Codling McLaughlin

Phyllis Codling McLaughlin

Historian/Genealogist

Jefferson County Historical Society

Phyllis Codling McLaughlin is a journalist and author of “Images of America: Carroll County” and “Trimble County,” featuring historic photos of the Kentucky counties. Specializing in genetic genealogy, she got the “bug” in 1991 researching a great-grandfather who fought in the Civil War. She and husband, Andrew “Patter” McLaughlin, a Madison native, live in Milton with a menagerie of pets.

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