Grist Mill

A grist mill operated at this location by 1720, probably first as a one-story log building. In 1794 John Prall, Jr. bought the mill site and surrounding land and built a stone grist mill on the site of the present mill, then developed a small commercial community with a linseed oil mill, the existing saw mill, quarries east of the mill site, a general store, several houses, and permits for two fisheries in the Delaware River. Prall's mill stood until 1874, when a fire that began in the covered railroad bridge behind the mill spread to it and destroyed it. Within three years, a new masonry mill was built using the foundation and walls of Prall's mill, and that building survives today. The Prallsville Mill Site benefited from nearly every kind of transportation available to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century industry: until 1834, raw materials arrived and finished products went to market by wagon and river boat; after 1834, canal boats were also used; and after 1850, the railroad became another shipping option. Sometime in the 1950s, the mill ground its last grist, and the site became a lumber yard and feed store until the State acquired the property in 1973. Today the Prallsville millsite is part of the Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park and is operated and managed by the Delaware River Mill Society, a non-profit community organization. The tall metal-clad Grain Silo, or Feed Mill, next to the grist mill was built circa 1890, is connected to the grist mill on the first and second floors, contains eight storage bins on its third and fourth floors, and stored delivered grain until processing.

Stockton, New Jersey · United States