The mill pond is formed by a 150′ rock and concrete dam across Turnback Creek. The dam was mysteriously dynamited in the late 1940’s, as seen below:
This event, and the competition of larger mills served by an improved national transportation system led to the commercial demise of the mill.
Bill Cameron, the individual responsible for restoring the mill in 1975, made an attempt to repair the dam which was unsuccessful.
Then the most recent former owner, Vivian Boswell, commissioned a project to restore the dam in 1992. Water began to flow over the repaired spillway in January 1993.
But the story does not end well. In April 1993, a “500-year” flood wiped out all the expended hard work and treasure overnight, leaving a dam as shown in the first image. The end result is that Britain Mill has not operated with water power since the dynamite incident.