Hagood Mill was for most of its life a busy center of commerce and a gathering place where local people met to discuss politics, crops, the weather, and other community matters, remaining for generations a center for rural families and friends. The Products of Industry Census records that in 1870 it produced 2,500 bushels of meal weighing 140,000 pounds and 200 bushels of flours weighing 11,200 pounds. One of the oldest known surviving gristmills still producing grain products in South Carolina, it stands on Hagood Creek, formerly Jennings Creek, a tributary of Twelve Mile River. Water was originally diverted from a dam site 1,650 feet away through an earthen headrace, while today it is pumped from the creek to the headrace; the last 80 feet of the race is made of wood. Its wooden water wheel, 20 feet in diameter and 4 feet wide, produced 22 horsepower, and the wheel and mechanical components were rebuilt in the mid-1970s with as many original parts as possible, followed by restoration in the mid-1980s and again in the mid-1990s. The ring gear measures 18 feet in diameter, and the two granite millstones weigh about 1,600 pounds each. The site presents the traditional art and folkways of Pickens County, including the livelihoods and professions by which men and women supported their families, and reflects generations of farmers, loggers, millers, wood carvers, craftspeople, and railroad, textile, and other workers. It is the home of Pickens County's Upcountry Folklife Festival and Old Time Fiddlin' Convention, held every September, and also hosts monthly events with mill operations, music, traditional food, living history performance, traditional arts, and folklife presentations. With the Pickens County Museum under the guidance of the Pickens County Cultural Commission, it also serves contemporary tourism and educational purposes, including support for South Carolina history teaching, planned interpretation of pre-historic petroglyphs and pictographs, and the Old Mill Race Nature Trail, where existing improvements include cleared paths, rest areas, identified plants and trees, and a covered footbridge, with future plans to reflect native Cherokee culture through plant identification and a pre-contact homesite with a winter home, summer home, sweat lodge, and garden.