War Eagle Mill

This working grist mill on the War Eagle River has been rebuilt multiple times since the Civil War. Confederate and Union troops both fought near this strategic crossing.

Sylvanus and Catherine Blackburn settled in the War Eagle Valley in 1832 and built a water-powered gristmill beside War Eagle Creek, establishing one of the first milling operations in northwest Arkansas. The Blackburns constructed their homestead with a distinctive stone chimney that still stands today. In 1848, a flood pushed the mill into the river and destroyed it completely. The Blackburns rebuilt and expanded the operation to include a sawmill by approximately 1860.

The Civil War brought destruction to the valley. The Fourth Iowa Regiment under Colonel Grenville Dodge occupied the site. After Union forces departed in March 1862, Confederate soldiers arrived and burned the mill to the ground to prevent it from falling back into Union hands, destroying the Blackburns' livelihood along with much of the surrounding community. When the war ended in 1865, the family returned to find only their house still standing amid the devastation. Sylvanus's son, James Austin Cameron Blackburn, undertook the painstaking reconstruction of the mill, completing it by 1873. But the mill's troubled history was not over: it burned down again in 1924 from causes unrelated to war.

The property lay dormant for nearly half a century until 1973, when Jewel Medlin purchased it. His wife Leta and daughter Zoe Medlin Caywood discovered the original blueprints and rebuilt the mill for the third time, creating a faithful replica of the 1873 structure. The fourth War Eagle Mill is now the only working gristmill in Arkansas and the only undershot water-powered mill operating in the United States, driven by an eighteen-foot cypress water wheel. In 1907, the original ferry crossing was replaced with a 182-foot steel bridge costing $4,790, now a beloved landmark in its own right. The mill was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the annual War Eagle Craft Fair draws visitors from across the region.

A Confederate soldier walks the banks of War Eagle Creek near the mill, his apparition appearing at dusk along the shoreline where his comrades once burned the Blackburn mill. Whether he was one of the soldiers who set the fire or simply a casualty who never left the valley remains unknown, but his presence along the river has been reported by multiple witnesses across decades.

The most persistent paranormal activity occurs on the third floor, in the Bean Palace restaurant where visitors eat cornbread and beans ground from the working mill below. Paranormal researchers have confirmed a presence in the Bean Palace. After hours, poltergeist activity erupts with alarming regularity: chairs change positions between closing and opening, lids fly off tea dispensers and sail across the room, and kitchen noises emanate from the empty cooking area as though someone is preparing a meal that no living person ordered. Disembodied voices and footsteps have been heard on the second and third floors. Items throughout the building have a tendency to move or fall to the floor of their own accord.

Some attribute the mill's haunting to the violent destruction it suffered during the Civil War, theorizing that a Confederate ghost may be making reparations for the burning by continuing to work the mill he helped destroy. Others believe the spirits are connected to the Blackburn family, whose determination to rebuild the mill three times over nearly two centuries suggests an attachment to this place that transcends death itself.

The mill is located at 11045 War Eagle Road in Rogers, open daily from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. It continues to stone-grind organic flours and cornmeal, offers guided historical tours, and operates the Bean Palace restaurant and gift shop.