In 1832, Sylvanus Blackburn left Tennessee with a wagon and four oxen and came to the War Eagle River valley in Arkansas, where he spent the winter building a log home and clearing his homestead, then brought his wife from Tennessee the next year. One of his first projects was a water-powered grist mill, but a flood on War Eagle destroyed it in 1838, and a second mill, four stories tall, was soon erected. During the Civil War, five of Blackburn's sons joined the Confederate Army and the rest of the family went to Texas, while the retreating Confederate Army burned the mill on War Eagle to prevent its use by Federal troops. Sylvanus' sixth son, James Austin Cameron Blackburn, built the third mill in 1873. The village of War Eagle grew around the grist mill, with a sawmill, carpentry shop, and blacksmith shop, but the grist mill remained the center of activity for socializing, square dancing, and weddings. In 1924 the mill burned again, and for nearly 50 years only the dam and raceway remained. In 1973, the centennial year of the original mill, Jewell A., Leta Medlin and Zoe Medlin Caywood built the existing fourth mill on the same foundation as an authentic reproduction of the first mill to preserve the history of grist milling.