Wartime Gristmill Destruction

Johnson Mill began with John Trusdale, who bought the site from a widow named Sutton and built a gristmill in 1835 on spring water. The mill was burned during the war. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas dates that to 1864, while a legislator at the 2012 unveiling tied it to Confederates at Pea Ridge. J. Q. Johnson and William Mays bought the site in 1865 and rebuilt, and about 1884 B. F. Johnson, J. Q.'s brother, took over Mays's share. Frank Johnson closed the mill in 1985, and it became the Inn at the Mill.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park — 13 mi
  The December 7, 1862 battlefield where about 2,700 fell and Hindman withdrew in the night, with the Borden orchard, Hindman Hall's free museum, and walking and driving tours.
• Walmart Museum — 16 mi
  Sam Walton's 1950 variety store on the Bentonville square, now a free museum with his 1979 pickup, a recreated office, the 1945 Newport store door and a 1950s-style soda counter.
• Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art — 17 mi
  A 2011 Moshe Safdie building on 120 acres of Ozark forest in Bentonville, with free admission, six trails, two ponds, a spring, an arboretum and a relocated Frank Lloyd Wright house.
• Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area — 17 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.

More markers nearby

• Old Mt. Comfort — 3.6 mi
• Holcomb's Spring in the Civil War — 4.3 mi
• Regular Baptist Church of Shiloh — 4.4 mi
• David Walker — 5.5 mi