By Rob Hallwachs
Photos by Linda Okamura

Sitting in a bosky pocket of San Marino today, the picturesque building offers few visual clues to its past life. With thick, arched brick and stucco walls, red-tiled roof, and simple yet elegant doorway surmounted by a small iron-railed balcony, it might have been a town hall in Mexico. Or a mansion in Madrid.

Instead, the historical markers nearby identify the vine-traced building as El Molino Viejo—The Old Mill—one of Southern California's first water-dependent businesses and the forerunner of the Southland's current $600-billion economy.

In addition to its present incarnation as a minor tourist stop and art gallery, the 200-year-old building has served variously as a private home, a party venue, and even as the golf clubhouse for a ritzy resort hotel.

But back then its use was strictly business and the location perfectly suited to its purpose.

"These days, if you have a water-dependent business in Southern California you can locate it nearly anywhere, since the water companies will pipe the water to you," said Tom Andrews, executive director of the Historical Society of Southern California. "Back then, they built their factories along a river or stream for both the power and the waste disposal that the water provided. The history of the development of modern California is also the history of the development of water."

Built about 1816 as a corn grist mill for Mission San Gabriel—the Roman Catholic Church's missionary settlement about two miles away—the building's foundation walls are five feet thick, providing structural strength against earthquakes and vibration from the heavy machinery on the ground floor. Originally, the second floor was used to store the milled grain.

Water, which powered the large round millstones used to grind the corn into meal, was channeled down to the mill from Los Robles and Mill canyons. The water was collected outside the mill in a large tank, from which it could be released into a water wheel that turned the heavy gears, axles and millstones. After providing the energy to operate the machinery, the water flowed through a ditch to a nearby reservoir, which had been dammed by the mission's priests and native workers.



Like most manufacturing processes, the mill soon became obsolete when an entrepreneur who had moved to California from New England built a new, more modern and efficient mill (a story destined to repeat itself many times in the years to come). The original building was used by the padres as an auxiliary mill (it helped supply the pueblo of Los Angeles) and as a site for fiestas. It became known, fittingly, as the Old Mill.

In the 1830s the church's lands were seized by the Mexican government, and after the Mexican-American War (1846-48) California became a United States possession and the property came into private ownership. By 1879 the building had been converted into a private home and was subsequently occupied by a series of wealthy swells.

Perhaps the building's strangest years were the early 1900s, when the land was owned by railroad and streetcar baron Henry Huntington. When Huntington also purchased the floundering Wentworth resort hotel nearby and opened it as the Huntington Hotel, the old gristmill built by the native slaves of the padres served as the clubhouse for the posh hotel's golf course.

Eventually, Huntington descendants renovated the mill in a romanticized recreation of its Mission-Era past—the iron balcony and exterior curtain rods undoubtedly weren't original—and willed the property to the city in 1962. Today, the mill, located at 1120 Old Mill Road, is operated and maintained by The Old Mill Foundation and is open to visitors free of charge from 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays (closed on holidays).

The days of corn grinding are long gone. But by standing back, under the shade of the trees, and narrowing your eyes just so, you can still see the pack animals and carts, hear the roar of the water, the creaking of the timbers and the rumble of the millstones, and imagine one of the Southland's first industries.

Editor's note: The Old Mill is one of many water-related businesses in Southern California. Our Fall issue will feature photos and stories about other artistic—and efficient—uses of water. If you would like to nominate a fountain, park, garden, sculpture, building or site for inclusion, please contact Denis Wolcott at (213) 250-6853 or at dwolcott@mwdh2o.com.

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