The Mills Become Towns 183 



At Milford, Connecticut, not half a mile off the Boston Post 

 Road, stands the Rose Mill. For two hundred and thirty-three 

 years, Fairfield County farmers have been bringing their rye, 

 buckwheat and corn there to be ground. When the old Post 

 Road became a wide, concrete highway, crowded with motor 

 traffic and lined with hot dog stands, shore dinner restau- 

 rants, gas stations and booths for the sale of garden pottery, 

 evergreens, toy windmills, maple sugar hearts, Mexican glass 

 and sweet corn in season, many people thought the need for 

 the old mill was over. They said the "summer people" were 

 pushing the farmers out of the county. Summer people didn't 

 farm. They let the cornfields go to daisies and ragweed, and 

 called it picturesque. Was it likely that a speed-crazed genera- 

 tion would wait for water power to turn buhrstones to grind 

 grain? Not when they could hop into their cars and ride to 

 Bridgeport and buy package goods at the chain stores. "Folks 

 want their things in cellophane, nowadays." 



But the Rose Mill continued to grind. It was a New York 

 business man who saw its possibilities and bought it and the 

 old white house beside the millpond from the miller, who 

 had been there nearly seventy years. And it was an enterpris- 

 ing, modern woman, living in Fairfield, who conceived the 

 idea that people might like to buy bread which tasted home- 

 made, and which was made from flour ground at a historic, 

 colonial mill. Pepperidge Farm Bread became an instantaneous 

 success. New Yorkers were glad to pay a higher price for 

 bread they liked the taste of. The demand went up to ten 

 thousand loaves a week. The stones at the Rose Mill are kept 

 busy grinding whole wheat, buckwheat, rye and corn for Pep- 

 peridge Farm and for other customers. An early American 

 industry which seemed doomed to pass away has been revived, 

 and has become a sizable, modern business. 



Van Wyck's Mill, at Fishkill Plains, in Dutchess County, 

 New York, is only a few years short of the Rose Mill's record. 

 It was in 1722 that William Verplanck, a nephew of the 

 Hudson River patroon, built a mill and a house at the far 



