It was there in the 1870's, as local newspapers carried advertisements for the mill. It was primarily a flour mill, but also ground corn and was a sawmill. Ruins are on private property! Note auger on the one photo.

I did have verbal permission. The old mill is adjacent to a commercial business, and I asked about going down to take photos. The response was, "Yeah, okay, sure,' which I took as all the approval I needed. I have contacted the Jacksboro Museum for more info; they tell me that they have a book which contains a photo of the mill when it was still in operation.

Jacksboro, Texas was the site of the trial of Satanta, Satank, and Big Tree in 1871. They were tried for the massacre of people on a wagon train in the Jacksboro area. The jail at Fort Richardson (an Army outpost) is directly across Lost Creek from the old mill. Depending on exactly when it was constructed, it might have been one of the few things that the Indian prisoners could see from their cells. (Actually, Satank was killed in an escape attempt on the way to his trial in Jacksboro.)Lots of genuine "cowboys and Indians" raids around Jacksboro. My great grandfather lived in Jacksboro at the time of the 1860 census, at a time when the little community was on the edge of the division between Indians and whites. He served as a Texas Ranger - which most able-bodied men on the frontier did from time to time.

The fellow I spoke to at the museum thinks that the mill was owned by one L. P. Adamson, who is the man who ran advertisements in the 1870's newspapers - if that is correct, then the mill would date from the early to mid-1870's.GPS: 33D 12.7'N, 98D 9.87'W ele 1,070'/326 meters Jacksboro Quadrangle