Cloister Lower Mill / Wenger's Mill
Lancaster Co. | Pennsylvania | USA
Watersource: Cocalico Creek
Cloister Lower Mill / Wenger's Mill
From the US 322 and Pa 272 intersection in Ephrata, Pa 272 southwest for one mile to left turn on Opal St. Turn right on Old Mill Road and turn left just before the bridge over Cocalico Cr. The mill is about 150 yards in on the right.
The staging has been in front of the 40'X 80' stone mill that stands 3.5 stories tall since 1970; but by 2003, the staging was gone and the entire exterior had been stripped of stucco and refurbished. The mill was built in 1785 after a 1748 mill burned. Ephrata Cloisters owned the mill in 1757, George Zimm the miller. The Cloister Group continued to own and operate the mill through the 1850's.
The Lower Cloister Mill / Wenger's Mill after the mill had been refurbished in the years between October 1999 and 2004.
Inscription in Latin implanted to the left of the second door after the stucco was removed. The scalloped gingerbread along the roof lines and the catshead seem incongruent with the plain religious order that built and operated the mill for 75 years. The Moravian order that built the adjoining Ephrata Cloisters.
December 2021
In 1864, P. W. Royer, in 1875 B. E. Wenger, and in 1899 Jacob Buck owned the mill. Samuel Mentzler closed the mill in 1915 and the mill switched from grinding grain to producing electricity for the W. W. Moyer Upper Mill on the Cocalico. The mill sat idle from 1970 through 2001.
December 2021