New Discovery
Posted By The Miller on December 13, 2009
As the water washes out more dirt I see more and more of the bedrock and ……. stuff. I am looking for a channel. Hansel (Former owner of the mill (1938 – 41) blasted out a channel with dynamite so he could get more horsepower. I know where it should be but it was under about 6 ft. of dirt.
The dirt is now gone and only rocks, sand and cement chunks are left. I took this photo from the deck on the back of the mill … looking down at the creek. In the photo you can see the wall (under the water) that blew out in the dust explosion of 1951. I thought it had been blown apart ….. wrong. The top part or second floor was cement blocks. They are all over the creek. The lower portion was a cement wall. Twelve inches thick with re bar - 23 1/2 ft wide and I don’t know how high. It is laying in the channel I have been looking for. The rest of the wall is still under the junk on the left. I need to remove this concrete to get to the channel.
Someone kicked a few boards off the covered bridge so they could grab the Christmas wreath. It was 8 ft. tall. Since we have restored the mill dam and mill pond the only way to get to the wreath was from the inside. Fortunately the boards didn’t fall into the creek. The county was able to fix it. I have contacted the media … 2 newspapers and 2 TV stations. I have heard other newspapers and TV stations have picked up the story. Hopefully someone will see the wreath. I think an 8 ft. Christmas wreath is easy to see.
Larry and Pete stopped by to give rides to folks. Well … they didn’t give them away! Covered Bridge Christmas was very good this year (last weekend of Nov and the first weekend of Dec.) … lots of folks came to stock up on Bridgeton Mill’s fresh stone ground products. They know we will be closed until spring.
This is a photo taken by the Indianapolis News just after we bought the place. The only time there was water on the south side of the creek was during a flood. This brought in lots of dirt, mud, sand …etc. The south side silted in and there was grass, weeds, bushes and trees growing below the mill. There was no mill pond, it was full of dirt, weeds …etc. Shortly after this photo was taken part of the foundation collapsed on the mill. We have come a long way since 1995. Karen and I would like to thank all the folks that encouraged and help us. We could not have done this without them.
The dam and mill pond are functional …… I could repair the waterpower. But, Karen says I have to pay for all the work we’ve done first. This winter I plan to do lots of research into hydroelectric.
This is a photo from the mill window. The finished dam, waterfall and mill pond are wonderful. I get to look at this everyday. When I’m mixing and bagging product I can’t quite here the customers …. the waterfall is so loud. I tell the folks I’m gona turn down the volume and I shut the window near me.
Since everyone was miserable and I had gotten the poisoning again … I hired a crane to finish the job. And what a crane it was. One hundred and fifteen feet tall.
A rock got into the hose and plugged the end. Jimmy was knocked over backwards into the water. After that I tried to stay behind him. Notice my new higher boots. They weren’t high enough cause I got cement poisoning again. Jimmy had cement poisoning on his shoulder … but he kept at it. Also notice all the pipes. Some of the pipes don’t have water coming out of them. I would put in a pipe to divert the water and then Jimmy would plug the hole and force the water to another pipe. What a mess. The dam was starting to look like Fred Flintstone’s house.
It felt like I had sand in my boots. Charlie and Dave kept talking about sand in their boots. When the day was over and we took off our boots …. there was some skin missing. Jimmy told us it was cement poisoning. He told us to use white vinegar on it. Karen had some in the Snack Shop so I put it on. I’m not much of a dancer but I sure did some fancy foot work after that ! ! ! Charlie and Dave thought they would wait till they got home. The next day my feet were hurting so I took off my shoes. The left foot was kind of black looking on the top and the blood veins looked like red lightning bolts. It was Sat. afternoon and the Doc. was closed so I went to the emergency room. Charlie’s wife called that night and said his feet looked bad and we told her to take him to the emergency room. Dave managed to cure his feet on his own. I think I missed the part about soaking in white vinegar.
Here we are trying to fill one of the holes with concrete. I’m holding a piece of plywood so it will stay in the hole until it dries. The idea was to blow the concrete to the back of the hole and force the water out. The shotcrete has more cement in it and less aggregate. So, it dries quicker and is harder when it dries. A normal garage floor is 3000 to 4000 lb concrete … this is around 8500 lb concrete. The biggest hole took 4 yards of concrete to fill. At $125.00 per yard that was one expensive hole ! ! ! You can see Dave in the background wire tying the metal together.