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| “To arrange school visits or group tours before Memorial Day or after Labor Day, call Julie Whitehall at 563-299-6024. To arrange visits between Memorial Day and Labor Day, call the Park office at 563-263-4337. Content of tours offered by Friends and by Park staff may differ.” | |||||||||
If there was one word for the summer of 2011 it was HOT. Of course there were nice days but we closed the mill on ten days because of the heat. We have never had to close that many days because of the heat. Our policy is to close the mill when the heat index exceeds 95°. At that temperature the interior of the mill is an oven, well exceeding 100°. The mill, of course, is not air conditioned and the portable fans can only provide small relief. We probably do not miss many visitors when we close the mill due to excessive heat, since most folks are not out and about when the weather is that hot. We also did not keep the mill open as late into October as we have in the past. We had trouble schedul-ing tour guides in October and also we saved money by closing a bit earlier in the fall. There were some very nice weekend days later in October and we surely missed some visitors. The Friends of the Mill have restored much of the machinery in the old mill and the mill is a great in-terpretive site. To make the most of this great historical site the Friends of the Mill have developed an exten-sive interpretive program consisting of three main aspects:
Each of these interpretive efforts were successful in 2011.
Summer Staffing Program The summer of 2011 was challenging and not just because of the hot weather. With the economy suf-fering through the great recession the last few years it has been hard to raise enough money to hire the tour guides to keep the doors of the mill open. We do not charge admission to the mill. The $8,000 cost to hire tour guides for the summer is almost all raised from donations. It is only because of the generous support of various businesses and individuals that the Friends of the Mill manage to keep the doors of the mill open. We did close early in October and closed some days due to the heat but otherwise the mill was open for the full summer season. The mill was closed due to heat for ten days during the summer of 2011 and was also closed early on several hot days. Eight days in July and two days in September the heat index was 95 degrees or greater and the mill was not open. The Friends of the Mill staffed the Old Mill on 81 days in 2011. This was a reduction from years past due to heat and also closing earlier in October. Because of the reduced number of days that the mill was open our staff costs were also reduced. The costs to staff the mill for the regular schedule was approximately $6,000.00. During regular open hours the mill had 5,408 visitors for a visitation rate of 16.7 visitors per hour. School Interpretive Program The Pine Creek Grist Mill is a popular destination for school field trips and May is the month for field trips. The numbers from this year’s spring field trip program were similar to the past few years. - Students participating: 835
The school field trip program makes for a very busy May for the Friends of the Mill. By the end of the month we have served about a thousand kids and have talked ourselves hoarse, but it is one of our most appre-ciated programs. We already have our spring 2012 schedule full. In addition to the May school tours we also host a few other tours through the warm season. These in-clude homeschool groups, bus tours, community groups and anyone else who wants a tour. In 2011 we hosted a 4-H group in a photo workshop, 100 summer school kids, a bus tour, and a home school group. Special EventsThe third part of our interpretive program is to put on two special events at the old mill. The special events help interpret the mill and bring its historical heritage to the people of Iowa and Illinois. The biggest event by far was Heritage Day on Sept. 17. Heritage Day was then followed by the Ghost of Pine Creek on Oct. 8. Heritage Day Heritage Day was similar to past years with lots of presenters doing everything from tatting, helping kids saw logs, taking old time photos, canoeing on the mill pond and many other activities, plus old time music to listen to, antique cars to look at, a blacksmith to talk about smithing, etc. Heritage Day is a great family day. On Heritage Day we ran the mill for twenty minutes every hour. We also had all four floors of the mill open with tour guides on every floor. When the mill is run during the summer we only have two tour guides working and therefore we only have the basement and the main floor open when the mill is running. On Herit-age Day the whole mill is open and all the machinery can be viewed as the machinery is running. We have no way to accurately count the number of people at Heritage Day. There is no “one” entrance and we run a shuttle bus between the mill area and the Buckskinner Rendezvous in the west end of the park, so cars are parked all over the park. To get a count that we can compare with other years we station someone at the front door of the mill and count people going into the mill. This is not even a count of the people who enter the mill since the basement door is also open. But it does give us a number we can compare from year to year. This year’s front door count was 1,061. That is not a record but it indicates a successful day.
Ghosts of Pine Creek Ghost of Pine Creek is a special event where the Friends of the Mill host a Halloween themed event with “ghosts.” Our ghost, however, are not scary but are actually people dressed up in period costumes to rep-resent people (ghosts) from 150 years ago. The ghost then give short presentations on what it was like to live 150 years ago. This year’s Ghost event had a harvest theme with an emphasis on how the pioneers harvested, cooked and stored the harvest in the 1850’s. Ghost of Pine Creek is always popular and we limit participation to 175 people.
ConclusionThe mission of the Friends of the Pine Creek Grist Mill is to restore, preserve and interpret the Pine Creek Grist Mill. Much of the machinery has been restored and the old mill is a great historic site, grinding grain into flour as it was done 160 years ago. The Friends of the Mill interpretive program served thousands of people in 2011. Our visitation during the summer was not a record number, mostly because of the hot weather that closed the mill for ten days and also the early closing in October, but we had thousands of people go through the mill. In addition we served almost a thousand school students and hopefully increased their under-standing of our pioneer heritage. The two big special events were well attended. The coming year we will again hire tour guides, staff the mill, host school field trips, put on special events and most definitely we will keep ourselves busy. As a volunteer organization we are always in need of more volunteers. If you or someone you know would like to help the Friends of the Mill by talking to school groups, being a tour guide, donating funds, helping to restore machinery, or in anyway you want, please con-tact the president of Friends of the Mill: Tom Hanifan
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Once again this past summer the mill was open weekends in May and then again just weekends in September and early October. In between, during the
summer months, the mill was open Wednesdays through Sundays. Hours were 12:30 PM to 4:30 PM. Usual-ly we had one person working on weekdays and two people working on weekends. On weekends we were also assisted by a park naturalist who came into the mill to assist in running the mill. The mill was run grind-ing grain into flour on Saturdays and Sundays at 1:30 PM and 3 PM.
We did, how-ever, increase the number of participating schools to fourteen.
Students getting divided into groups, canoeing on the mill pond, and learning about the mill.
