This spring, the Mill at Anselma in Chester Springs started grinding wheat again for the first time in nearly 140 years.

Most people have no idea they're living in what was once the breadbasket of colonial America. In the eighteenth century, Chester County farms produced more grain than almost anywhere else in the colonies. That grain got milled into flour, loaded onto wagons, and shipped to feed a growing population and eventually, an army. Washington's troops at Valley Forge were surviving in part on food that came from this region. The Mill at Anselma, built in 1747 along Pickering Creek, was part of that supply chain. It was grinding wheat when the Declaration of Independence was still twenty-nine years away.

The wheat side of the mill had been dormant since the 1880s. Getting it running again was a challenge. Miller Dave Rollenhagen spent months on careful repairs and engineering work to bring the original nineteenth-century machinery back to life.

As the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary, Chester County doesn't need to build anything new to mark the occasion. It already has places that were here before the nation existed. The Mill at Anselma is 277 years old. It was built by Samuel Lightfoot in 1747, operated through the Revolution, the Civil War, and two World Wars, and is still running today on its original power train. As far as anyone knows, it is the only pre-Revolutionary custom grist mill in the country still operating with all its original structures and equipment intact. Nothing has ever been changed.

The 2026 season opened April 11. When you visit, the water wheel is turning, the wooden gears are moving, and the millstones are grinding. You can hear it, smell it, and watch it happen. Freshly ground wheat flour from these first production runs is on sale at the Visitor Center while it lasts stone-ground on 1747 machinery, milled right here in Chester Springs.

Open weekends through December. Saturday tours on the hour, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday tours 1 to 3 p.m. Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for seniors and kids. Grounds are free, dawn to dusk, year-round.

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