The mill on Saltillo's main street

On Route 829, the main street of Saltillo, stands a two and a half story frame grist mill measuring 36 by 28 feet, clapboard sided, on a coursed rubble stone foundation under a metal roof. The National Register nomination calls it the Hudson Grist Mill and gives Crotsley Mill as its other name.

The site is older than the building. Henry Hubbell, the pioneer owner of the land the town sits on, built grist and saw mills on North Spring Creek in 1797. A log dam a quarter mile upstream fed a 14 foot overshot bucket wheel that ran both. Africa's 1883 county history adds that Hubbell had arrived in 1796 and, with an adjoining landowner named Thomas Greer, laid out the town as Springville, with a lot on the plat set apart for a courthouse. In 1850 the grist mill was rebuilt and its value rose from $400 to $1,000. Who rebuilt it is told two ways: the nomination says Hubbell's heirs, Africa says the Hudson heirs. How much of the 1797 structure, if any, survived the rebuilding, the nomination says, is unknown.

George Hudson owned the mill from 1850 to 1859, then Henry Hudson until 1864, when he sold to A. K. Green before going off to serve in the Civil War. Philip E. Weaver and his son Henry T. ran it from 1880 to 1920, replacing the buhr stones with modern milling equipment in 1905. In 1920 Edgar G. Weaver and Charles Crotsley fitted a 16 horsepower Fitz overshot steel water wheel, backed by a 20 horsepower Fairbanks Morse kerosene engine for low water, built the grain bin addition over the tail race and reinforced the log dam with concrete. Crotsley became sole owner in 1924 and kept the business going until 1940.

The nomination, prepared in November 1989 under the Industrial Resources of Huntingdon County multiple property listing, cites Criterion A: an example of an important county industry and of the continuing use of an early milling site, with the unusual feature of a twentieth century water wheel. The 14 foot Fitz wheel, made in Hanover, Pennsylvania according to the National Park Service's 1991 inventory of the county's industrial sites, remains in badly deteriorated condition. Much of the milling equipment went in the early 1950s, when Kenneth Crotsley cleared it out for a pre-bagged feed business that ran only briefly. A cockle machine and a few minor pieces stayed behind.

In 1920, Edgar G. Weaver and Charles Crotsley updated the operation by installing a 16-horsepower Fitz overshot steel water wheel, with a 20-horsepower Fairbanks Morse kerosene engine for auxiliary power when water was low.National Register of Historic Places nomination, Hudson Grist Mill (reference 90000390), 90000390, section 8, p5 · character 5,558 of the scanned text

Checked 2026-09-05 · National Register of Historic Places nomination, read in full

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