For about 200 years after the first Europeans arrived, settlements had to be self-supporting, producing food, clothing, and shelter locally and processing essential raw materials through small industries such as sawmills, gristmills, fulling mills, and distilleries along rivers and streams. The Perryopolis pre-industrial complex is one of the only original pre-industrial sites remaining in the country. Its development began just before the War for Independence, when George Washington instructed his overseer, Gilbert Simpson, to construct a grist mill on land he had purchased in 1769 after Western Pennsylvania became available for settlement. Milling began in 1776 and ended in 1918. A distillery beside the grist mill was built about 1790 and turned surplus grain into whiskey, the only cash product settlers could exchange for needed goods on the early frontier; after the federal government taxed whiskey in 1791, the Whiskey Rebellion spread across the frontier, most violently in Western Pennsylvania. The site also includes a bakery believed to have been built about 1890, with an original stone bake oven capable of baking up to 200 loaves of bread in one day, second-floor storage for flour and other ingredients, and a lean-to for firewood; it was associated with the Smith family, the last owners and operators of the grist mill, and was reconstructed in 1981. About one-tenth of a mile southwest of the grist mill stands a fulling mill built about 1814, where wool was given its final processing into cloth, and archaeological research indicates that a sawmill stood just below it; both mills used a common mill pond and raceway.
