If you expected to find old sacks of wheat or a dusty flour bin, you are going to be disappointed. This is the Crystal Mill, but it never ground a single grain of grain. Instead, it served as a powerhouse for the Sheep Mountain Tunnel.
Built in 1893 by George C. Eaton and B.S. Phillips, the structure was technically a compressor station. The local mining interests needed air, and they needed it under pressure. A horizontal waterwheel turned a turbine to drive an air compressor, sending compressed air to miners in nearby silver mines to power their heavy tools.
It sat on a mining claim called Lost Horse, and only earned the name mill because of a 3-stamp ore-crushing building to the south. Once the tunnel mine shut down in 1917, the machinery went silent.
Today, the wooden ruins sit on an outcrop above the Crystal River. You can get here from Marble via four-wheel drive. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 5, 1985.
Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons
Written by Kyle McLonely
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