A look inside how Lanterman’s Mill still operates in Youngstown’s Mill Creek MetroParks

In 2025, the staff at Lanterman’s Mill in Youngstown are set to celebrate major anniversaries in the mill’s history.

Throughout its hundred-year history, the property at Mill Creek Gorge has been an operational sawmill, gristmill, popular swimming spot and nature museum.

In 1974, Lanterman’s Mill entered the National Register of Historic Places in the U.S.

For Lanterman’s Mill, 2025 marks two major milestones: 180 years since the current mill was built in 1845 by German Lanterman and 40 years since the mill’s major restoration was completed.

Eric Simione, manager of Lanterman’s Mill in Youngstown, walks through how things work at the still-operational gristmill on Canfield Road in Youngstown.

The beginning of Lanterman’s Mill

Simione said the property’s history started in 1798 when Phineas Hill operated the saw and grist mill along Mill Creek from 1799 to 1822. The natural waterfall, now known as Lanterman’s Falls, was originally owned by John Young, founder of Youngstown.

According to Mill Creek, Young sold the waterfall property to Hill but made him agree to build a sawmill and gristmill on the site within eighteen months of the purchase.

In 1823 another owner, Eli Baldwin, took over the property and built the second mill.

“That previous mill was washed away in a flood,” said Simione. “The Lanterman’s Mill as we know it was the third mill. It was originally built in 1845-1846 by German Lanterman and his brother-in-law Samuel Kimberly. At the base of this building, the walls are 10 feet thick, so it’s not going to get washed away.”

Inside Lanterman’s Mill, several signs outline the history of the mill. There are a total of five floors of the mill: the large water wheel occupying the bottom floor and an attic on the top.

The mill operated until 1888.

What does a gristmill do?

A gristmill grinds grains into flour using large, heavy millstones powered by water.

“They would package the flour in barrels, which weighed 200 pounds, but the barrel weighed four pounds. So they would stamp and send out 196 pounds of flour in a barrel,” said Simione.

Currently, the Mill Creek MetroParks staff are working on repairing and updating parts of the mill, like sharpening the stones.

The mill is still operational and staff sell bags of freshly-ground flour in the Lanterman’s Mill gift shop. The flour is preservative-free and made using the same method Lanterman designed for the mill back in 1845.

When it was built, Lanterman’s Mill was one of several mills in operation along the Mahoning River.

“It’s special because it’s one of the only ones left,” Simione said. “This is one of only five mills that is still operating. At the time this mill was first functioning, it was one of 17 mills in Mahoning County alone, and so Lanterman did business with a lot of the local farmers. Lanterman also owned a farm in Austintown.”

Step into the past

A lot of the wood inside Lanterman’s Mill is still original, and the wheel weighs about 1,800 pounds.

“The ingenuity of the places all these years later is amazing,” Simione said.

Water from Mill Creek flows inside the building’s basement to the water wheel, which spins and powers the gears, pulleys and belts to grind grains into flour.

“The building is built right into the side of the Mill Creek Gorge,” he said. “Not only do you have the natural rock formations, but you can see and hear a lot of the water seeping in through the cracks and gaps of the rocks.”

“A great part of Youngstown history is that after these kinds of mills in the 1800s, we all know we had the steel mills. You can see there’s a lot of iron deposit, that’s what the orange is from, the iron,” Simione said. “They’d use that later in the 1990s to develop steel.”

During the winter, even when there’s a layer of ice on top of the creek, they’re able to still operate the wheel since it’s insulated from icy conditions.

Swimming spot, museum at Lanterman’s Mill

The mill closed in 1888 and was purchased by Mill Creek MetroParks in 1892.

“We’re fortunate that when this mill closed in 1888 it became park property. Mill Creek Park was established down by the gardens in 1891 and Volney Rogers was slowly purchasing property upstream. In 1892, he bought this mill. If this doesn’t become park property, this would not still be here,” Simione said.

Simione said the waterfall at the then-closed Lanterman’s Mill became a popular summer swimming attraction for locals until it was prohibited in the late 1980s.

“They used the bottom floor as the changing rooms,” he said. “I can’t find any evidence as to whether it was inside or outside, but there was a hot dog stand down here. The proximity to Idora Park made it one of those all-summer hangout. I would guess some of our great-grandparents did swim here.”

The first floor of Lanterman’s Mill transformed in 1933 to the Old Mill Museum by Ernest Vickers who collected the first specimens for the exhibit.

“Originally intended to provide park visitors with a park-centered natural history collection, [Vickers’ collection] quickly began to display artifacts from all over the world,” according to displays in the mill.

More exhibits were added as it expanded into a popular historical museum from 1957 until it closed in 1982.

$600,000 restoration process

Lanterman’s Mill underwent a major restoration, which was funded by the Ward and Florence Beecher Foundations, from 1982 until 1984.

“It reopened in 1985, so next year is a pretty big year for us. We have the 180-year-anniversary of the mill itself in 1845, and the 40-year anniversary of the renovations in 1985,” Simione said.

Dr. Ward B. Flad and Eleanor Beecher Flad gave Mill Creek MetroParks $600,000 for the restoration of Lanterman’s Mill back to the way it was in its original operating days.

“The exterior had a lot of things replaced, and they had to do stonework down by where the wheel is and work on different floors,” Simione said.

To visit Lanterman’s Mill, visitors can park on East Park Drive, located off Canfield Road, then cross Canfield Road to walk down to Lanterman’s Mill and the Covered Bridge.

Lanterman’s Mill is open seasonally, from May through October.

Read the original article at Mahoning Matters.