Thistlethwaite Falls

In 1854 at this site, Timothy Thistlethwaite and his brother-in-law Joseph Ratliff dammed the river with farm teams, placing large boulders at the bottom of an earth-and-stone fill in the river channel and changing the river’s course into a new channel over a rocky ledge that formed Thistlethwaite Falls. The falls withstood a century of seasonal floods. Timothy Thistlethwaite’s wife’s grandfather, Cornelius Ratliff, Sr., had come to this site in 1810 after being impressed by the heavy growth of timber and the mass of building stone lying loosely in the riverbed. Thistlethwaite’s sawmill stood at the edge of the falls over a shoulder of rock near the bull wheel, and a lock above the falls regulated the volume of water used to turn the water wheel. The 47-foot drop at the falls allowed Timothy Thistlethwaite to develop several mills in the Happy Hollow district of early Richmond, including a grist mill, flour mill, paper mill, and lumber sawing mill. After 80 years, little remained of these mills except the pit in the falls that ran the bull wheels of the up-and-down saw and part of a raceway continuing downstream from the paper mill site.

Richmond, Indiana · United States