Founding Friends Gather

To mark the second anniversary of the Friends of Cooch’s Bridge, over 150 fans, followers and founders gathered at three separate special events the first weekend of June 2022.

The events included a day of guided tours of the Cooch-Dayett Mill Historic Site, rarely open to the public.

The mill is a marvelous wayback machine that propels visitors into industrial Delaware circa 1850.

Thanks to the mill’s unspoiled internal mechanisms, visitors can readily see how, through the power of flowing water and human muscle, millers turned grain-farmers’ raw products into tasty consumer goods.

Besides representing a beehive of bygone commerce, the mill represents an important chapter in the book of American ingenuity.

The mill’s designer was Delawarean inventor Oliver Evans, who in the late 18th century pioneered the use of factory automation, beginning with flour mills. His patent for the design of an industrial flour mill, personally approved by Thomas Jefferson, was only the third US patent granted by the federal government.

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