Roberson Mill holds Fall Festival
“We wanted a place where people could come and sit because mills were once the center of the community before general stores,” said Jeff Rainey, VP of the FORM board. “Farmers would come here and get their grain ground and then talk about grain prices and all kinds of things."
Friends of Roberson Mill (FORM) hosted a Fall Festival on Saturday that included tours of the mill, a silent auction fundraiser, a community pot luck meal, music by George Slusher and Eric Reese, and storytelling emceed by Ricky Cox, a local educator, folklorist, and musician.
Built in the 1880s by John W. Epperly, the water-powered grist mill (located at 1367a Roberson Mill Rd., pictured below) was owned by the Roberson family from 1931 to the recent present when it was named on the current registry of National Historic Places and received nonprofit status.
Renovation of the mill began in 2020 and started with being cleared out, said Regina Roberson Cox, the board chairman of FORM and granddaughter and daughter of the late Homer and Harry Roberson, who between them owned and ran the mill till the mid-‘80s.
602 East Main Street
Floyd Virginia
540-745-8686
With a goal of restoring the mill back into operation as a living history museum and an educational facility, FORM enlisted the help of professionals and volunteers to make the renovations, which so far have included repairing the foundation and exterior framing, replacing the roof, siding, windows, and repairing damaged areas of the interior flooring.
Today, the mill has a parking lot, funded by the Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and a porch.
“We wanted a place where people could come and sit because mills were once the center of the community before general stores,” said Jeff Rainey, VP of the FORM board, who has a background in milling and historic preservation. “Farmers would come here and get their grain ground and then talk about grain prices and all kinds of things,” he added.
Rainey, who is from Great Falls and has helped restore the workings of the mill, gave tours during the event. He spoke of the common mill design of the day and the simple machines going back to the Greeks, which would move the grain in the process of milling through every floor of the building.