Menges Mills
York Co. | Pennsylvania | USA
Watersource: West Branch of the Codorus Creek.
Menges Mills
Take Pa 116 from Hanover for about8 miles. Turn left on Colonial Valley Rd. and go 0.7 miles to the mill on left. The miller's house is just beyond the mill on the left.
A large 50'x60' fieldstone mill rising 3.5 plus stories. Fed by a millrace of a mile long, hand dug. It has long been known for it's up and down saw mill and notoriously as being a haunted mill around All Souls Eve (Halloween).
The mill was built on land aquired from Lord Baltimore in 1773 by John Hershey. Two overshot waterwheels are located within the mill, a German practice, to protect them from freezing in severe winter weather. A sawmill was contained within the mill as late as the early 1900's.
It has been let to become run down in the last several decades and it would be good to preserve this mill that has been so prominent in York County's history, that the community was named after the mill.
Vintage photo indicates the millrace intake was from a pond in the front of the mill, notice bar screen. Photo supplied by Robert T. Kinsey 02/05/2005. Location: (ADC Map #36, F/G 1).
A 1950's postcard, supplied by Ted Hazen, of the up and down saw blade in the Menges Mills' saw mill had been used for over 200 years. It had been last powered by a small diameter Fitz Water Wheel.
Menges up-and-down sawmill which at one time sawed logs using water power. The saw mill was moved to the mill from another location. The saw mill is located next to the old stone mill in the Colonial Valley at Menges Mills just west of York, in York County, Pennsylvania. Color postcard from the 1960's.