In the 1700s, families settled along the banks of the South Branch of the Raritan River at a place that became the town of Clinton, where the river nourished crops and provided water power that made the town a center for local industry. The mill harnessed moving water from the race through trash racks that stopped floating logs and large debris, while gates behind the racks let the miller control the amount of water in the race. Water flowed through the flume into the water box beside the wheel, where a water wheel or turbine at the end of the flume turned from the movement of the water and powered gears and machinery. The Red Mill’s breast wheel, a vertical wheel with buckets around its rim, was struck by water about halfway up its curved side and rotated by the weight of water spilling into the buckets. Connected by a horizontal shaft to the inside of the stone wall of the mill’s lower level, it activated interlocking gears that turned shafts with pulleys and leather belts in a power train that powered millstones and other machinery throughout the mill’s four floors. In 1903, the Tomson Brothers installed a water turbine in the mill that functioned similarly to a water wheel but lay on its side submerged in water instead of standing vertically, and it harnessed water power more efficiently. By the middle of the 1800s, old-fashioned water wheels began to be replaced by smaller, longer-lasting iron turbines whose outer-ring veins guided water into a central rotor before it escaped downward into the tailrace. Rotary motion from the water wheel was transmitted by shafts and gears throughout the mill, and belts carried power to screw conveyors, bucket elevators, and machines that turned grain into grist. The mill’s water wheel was originally wood, then in 1965 a metal wheel commissioned by the museum was made by the Fitz Water Wheel Company, and in 1994 it was replaced by a new wheel designed and built by the Foster Wheeler Corporation.

Photo: Michael Herrick

Clinton, New Jersey · USA