McDonald's Mill

McDonald's Mill is located on VA State Route 785 about 10 miles from Blacksburg towards Catawba.

 The current McDonald's Mill was built in 1861 and was featured in a Roanoke Times article about land trust.  It pleases me that the current owners, Ned and Janet Yost, want to preserve the mill and the land around it so that others can get a glimpse of life on the North Fork of the Roanoke River as it was when the region was first occupied by immigrants from the British Isles.  The origin of the creek  that eventually becomes the Roanoke River is just a mile or two from Dad's home place. The fledgling stream gathered water quickly  from springs and hollows and in a short distance, was big enough to make a mill pond inside the current Montgomery County line. The stream was dammed and a race was constructed of lumber sawed for nearby forest to carry the water to the top of the mill wheel several hundred yards downstream. According to Yost, the mill was established in the 1790s and was operated by five generations of McDonalds. Two buildings preceeded the current structure that Yost purchased in 1952.

An idle grinding wheel serves as a reminder of the past and a durable picnic table near the meandering stream.

Dad has vivid memories of the mill and its importance to the neighborhood that took on its name. He had worked with his dad, brothers, and neighbors to wrestle out a living on the steep hills and narrow bottoms of the upper North Fork. While still a boy, he remembers playing in the mill. He remembers when the wooden races became so broken that a steam engine was brought in to replace the water power. But in the beginning, the creek was the reason the mill was where it was and the mill was the reason that a community grew up around it. 

                                                    The unharnessed North Fork of the
                                                    Roanoke River now by-passes the
                                                    Historic Mill.