Old Mill draws lovers, artists, photographers

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Thousands of visitors flock to the Old Mill park each year to snap photos and enjoy the scenery and intricate gardens, but few know the site is steeped in history.

Famous for its spot in the opening credits of the 1937 film "Gone With the Wind," the Old Mill was built in 1933 as a replica of an 1830s water-powered mill. It is surrounded by concrete sculptures and bridges that fool many into believing they are walking on smooth petrified wood. Inside are artifacts from the Trail of Tears, local plantations and passenger steamboats.

Locals say they can't recall any grand story or lore as to how the mill was chosen for the movie. They just say they know others were in the running and North Little Rock's was picked. The movie connection resurrects childhood memories for many, drawing them to the park, tucked in a hilly residential neighborhood.

"I remember watching 'Gone With the Wind' with my parents and them saying, 'That's the mill over in Little Rock,' " said David Tate, who came from Cranston, R.I., with his 9-month-old daughter Heather and wife Jennifer.

Tate said he saw the mill in a large picture at the Little Rock National Airport when they arrived in town to visit family and decided to revisit the site. His wife had a camera strap slung over her shoulder and they held the baby girl in a crook of one of the mill's bridges, trying to get her to smile for a photo.

Jack Singleton, the park's master gardener and a former pastor, said the spread of electricity in the South made such mills obsolete, prompting developer Justin Matthews to build the recreation on a patch of land that wouldn't do well for housing.

Even though the two-story stone building is most noted for its spot in cinema history, Singleton thinks visitors today appreciate it more for the gardens that surround it.

Matthews collaborated with Mexican artist Dionicio Rodriguez, who used a mixture of concrete to create sculptures and foot bridges around the mill that twist and turn, resembling petrified wood.

"He had a secret formula," Singleton said. "He even scraped the labels off of the cans" of the products he used.

An authentic 1828 grist mill sits on the first floor of the building and some of the stones in the walls on the second floor came from an Arkansas plantation. Three parts of a wrought-iron shaft of the stern wheel of a passenger steamboat that traveled the Arkansas River in the 1800s were cut to make parts of the mill as well.