Van Winkle's Mill

Aaron Anderson Van Winkle, called Rock, ran the mill from the inside. Born enslaved in Alabama in 1829 and brought to Benton County as a child, he became Peter Van Winkle's property after 1848 and rose to foreman, overseeing the first steam-powered sawmill in Arkansas. Taken to Texas during the war, he was back by 1866 as a paid freedman and helped rebuild the mill and the community. He married Jane Rich in 1867 and raised ten children, stayed until 1884 and was paid more than some white employees. He died in 1904 and is buried in Bentonville Cemetery.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area — 1.4 mi
  Arkansas's largest state park, about 12,000 acres on Beaver Lake, with the Van Winkle mill site, a graveyard of enslaved people, 54 miles of trail and regulated hunting.
• Pea Ridge National Military Park — 11 mi
  Where Union troops held the March 1862 Civil War battle that kept Missouri in the Union, with Elkhorn Tavern, a Cherokee Trail of Tears road and a signed tour route.
• Thorncrown Chapel — 13 mi
  E. Fay Jones's 1980 glass-and-timber chapel in the Eureka Springs woods, 48 feet high with 425 windows, ranked by the AIA among the best American buildings of its century.
• Eureka Springs Historic District — 14 mi
  An 1879 Ozark spring town on a bluff, with 230 streets and none at right angles, Basin Spring Park, the 1886 Crescent Hotel and a National Register district since 1970.

More markers nearby

• Cross Hollows — 8.7 mi
• Rev. James Ingram — 9.4 mi
• Regular Baptist Church of Shiloh — 12 mi
• Holcomb's Spring in the Civil War — 12 mi