42 HISTORY OF PASADENA. 



THE STORY OF THE MILLS. 



' 'The Old Mill ' ' is one of the historic spots near Pasadena for romantic 

 people and history hunters to visit, as a relic of the old Spanish Mission 

 days. But it is a fact, though little known, that there are really two old 

 Mission mills partly remaining, besides a private one built by Daniel Sex- 

 ton at East San Gabriel. The history of the two Mission mills has been 

 woefully mixed, confused, transposed ; and I found it necessary to expend a 

 vast deal of time, patience, perseverance, research, personal inquiry of living 

 witnesses, and personal examination of the remaining parts of the structures, 

 before I could unravel the tangled threads of error running through every 

 account of " the old mill " that has appeared in print hitherto. Even some 

 of the attempts at sober history in the matter have been little better than 

 romantic fancy. It is so much easier and pleasanter to imagine how it 

 "might have been " than it is to hunt up facts as to how it really was. 



MILL NO. I — THE OLD STONE MILL. 

 This was the first grist mill to be run by water power ever attempted 

 to be built in California, and was erected under the administration of Padre 

 Zalvidea, with Claudio lyopez as major domo — in about 1810 to 1812.* 

 Very little grain had been raised on the Mission lands until after Zalvidea 

 took charge, in 1806 ; and the small amount of corn, wheat and barley pro- 

 duced was made into meal by the Indian women with their old native 

 metates and mealing stones, while the men were kept busy at heavier work, 

 mostly of the building sort, besides looking after the flocks and herds which 

 furnished their principal food supply. But now Zalvidea pushed horticul- 

 ture, viniculture and agriculture forward, and in a short time had large 

 crops of grain to ship away. Then he wanted a mill and built this one. 

 [See full account of its dimensions, structure, and other particulars in Chap- 

 ter 19; articles on "The Old Mill," "Mill Canyon," "Wilson Ivake," 

 etc.] But after all their hard toil and zeal and hope in building it, this mill 

 proved a failure because of dampness. It was built in the hillside. Its 

 west main wall was also the wall of the deep, funnel-shaped cisterns or fore- 

 bays which furnished the water head. The basement arch or water wheel 

 chamber was so low that the powerful jet of water striking the horizontal 

 wheel would splash all over the walls and work up through the shaft hole 

 to the mill stones on the upper floor. So that as fast as the meal was made 

 it had to be carried away to dry store rooms at the Mission, where Indian 

 women bolted or sifted it by a hand process of their own devising. The 

 distance of the mill from the business center at the Mission was also a great 

 drawback. And from this combination of adverse conditions, the mill had 



*Wm. Heath Davis in his book, " Sixty Years in California", p. 251, tells of a mill built where is 

 now Clay street, in San Francisco, in 1S39, and adds : " This was the first grist mill in California. It 

 was operated by six mules." Yet Pasadena's old stone mill, run by water power, was built more than a 

 quarter century before that; and the one in front of the San Gabriel Mission church was built at least 

 17 years before the " mule mill " which he claims to have been first. And Joseph Chapman built one at 

 Santa Ynez in 1820-21. So Davis is widely in error as to " first grist mill in California." 



