The mill in the Shade Gap Narrows

Less than a mile north of Shade Gap, along Route 522, a three story frame grist mill stands in the Shade Gap Narrows. Brice X. Blair built it in 1846, the nomination says; Africa's 1883 county history puts the work at 1846 and 1847. Blair was the grandson of a pioneer settler in the area and the father of J.C. Blair, the Huntingdon manufacturer.

Blair sold the mill in 1854 to Mathias Shoop, who added an engine and fixtures to the water powered wheel. Joshua Price became the owner in 1861, and the mill stayed in the Price family until 1897. In 1912 C.S. Hess bought it, and he and his sons ran it until 1973. Through all of that it produced flour, corn meal and animal feeds.

The building measures 40 by 30 feet, with a one story frame office joined to its southwest corner. It has a rubble stone foundation, timber post and beam framing, clapboard siding, six over six windows and a metal gambrel roof with a cross gable hoist housing on the west side.

The nomination says virtually all of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century machinery remains in place: the metal water wheel, pulleys and shafts, elevators and hoists. Most of the equipment was made in Pennsylvania by the Wolf Company of Chambersburg and the Sprout Waldron Company of Muncy. The machinery fills the first and third stories, with storage bins on the second, and the water wheel and gearing remain in the basement. Only the diesel engine, which the Hesses used for power, was removed. That description comes from Nancy Shedd's 1988 survey of the county's industrial sites, which the nomination drew on directly and which was published as the county engineering inventory in 1991.

The mill stopped in 1973 to 74. The millrace has been filled in and the dam destroyed by road construction. The owners who bought it in 1975 meant to restart flour milling, then built a modern feed mill, retail office and storage bins to the south instead. The nomination reached the National Park Service in February 1990 under the Industrial Resources of Huntingdon County multiple property submission, for engineering and industry, with a period of significance of 1846 to 1939. Among its sources are the Dublin Township tax assessments for 1845 to 1865, which the nomination says do not indicate any major change to the structure after 1846.

This is the only one of the county's seven surviving grist mills which retains enough of its milling machinery to provide information on the technology of milling during the period to which the equipment dates.National Register of Historic Places nomination, Shade Gap Feed and Flour Mill (reference 90000396), 90000396, section 7, p4 · character 4,281 of the scanned text

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

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