Until the early 1970s, before Brenneman Church Road was paved and rerouted west of the mill, a gravel road passed on this side of the mill and crossed the tail race at this point. After that road became an easement for adjacent landowners, a hole opened in the roadway over the tail race in 2009, making it impassable and filling the tail race with earth and gravel. Clearing the debris to repair the roadway uncovered a stone-slab bridge built by laying large flat limestones across the tail race's sturdy stone walls, an unusual construction method. No records of its construction are known. One of the largest stones, a six-foot by ten-foot slab weighing more than eight thousand pounds, had broken at the edge of the right-hand wall, causing the right-hand edge of the remaining six-foot by eight-foot portion to drop into the race along with the fill above it. To preserve this distinctive piece of architectural history, support was built beneath the broken stone and the stone bridge was left open for viewing, while a modern ten-foot-wide steel and wood bridge was built above it to give neighbors access to their fields and preserve a bridge tied to the agricultural economy that has driven this part of the Shenandoah Valley since its settlement in the mid 1700s.