Lower Bluff Sawmill

Lower Bluff Sawmill. Fort King George Historic Site. The ruins in front of you were the foundations of the Darien Eastern Sawmill, later to be called the Hilton and Dodge Lumber Company, or Lower Bluff Mill. The Darien Eastern Sawmill built in 1819, was one of the first steam-powered sawmills to be operated in the Southeast. The picture to the above left, made in the late 1800s, was taken from the tiny island hammock in the log basin behind you. By the time it became the Hilton and Dodge Lumber Company in 1888, this mill was a major economic engine for the area. It sawed millions of feet in lumber each year, helping to make Darien on the richest timber ports on the east coast. Cypress and yellow pine were cut far upriver, snaked out of the swamps, made into rafts and floated down to this site where they were stored in large log basins. The logs were later retrieved from storage by a steam-powered conveyor belt or crane that entered logs into the mill where they were processed. Timber schooners from all over the world came to this bluff to pick up this highly valued lumber. Ballast stones from these ships are found on this site. The two islands in the marsh beyond the bluff are made from ballast stones emptied off schooners arriving to this bluff. Due to the major depletion of large cypress and pine trees upriver, this mill shut down in the early 1900s.