Cedar Creek Grist Mill draws crowds despite wear and tearSubscriber Exclusive

WOODLAND — Undaunted by a sudden summer rainstorm and extremely limited parking, scores of visitors made their way to the historic Cedar Creek Grist Mill in Woodland on Saturday afternoon for the mill’s annual Strawberry Shortcake Day.

One of the special last-Saturday gatherings that take place on the back porch of the 150-year-old flour grinding mill from May through September, the annual event serves up samples of tender shortcake made from the mill’s soft white flour, smothered in fresh strawberries and whipped cream.

The mill offers other special events the last Saturday of the month throughout the year, including a blueberry pancake day in July and cornbread day in September. But longtime mill volunteer Mary Powers of Amboy said the strawberry shortcake event is always among the mill’s most popular.

This year, volunteers came prepared with more than 200 hunks of shortbread and nearly $500 worth of strawberries.

Even that amount of food, however, is not always enough to satisfy the crowds that flood the mill on the last Saturday in June.

“Sometimes we run out by 2 or 2:30,” Powers said.

Visitors who attend these Saturday afternoon events also get to glimpse the grist mill’s “working museum” in action as volunteers demonstrate how they grind grain into flour using a system of pulleys and belts powered only by churning water from the nearby Cedar Creek.

According to the Friends of the Cedar Creek Grist Mill, the historic grist mill, built in 1876 by George Woodham and his sons, is the only water-powered, grain-grinding mill in Washington that still has its original structure.

‘Raise the Roof’

The grist mill’s special events are free and open to the public, but donations are encouraged. Visitors can deposit cash into one of the on-site donation boxes, send money online through Venmo or purchase goods, such as cookbooks and flour sacks, to help keep the historic mill open on the weekends and pay for needed repairs.

This year, the Friends of the Cedar Creek Grist Mill also launched a “Raise the Roof” fundraising campaign to help fix a critical piece of mill infrastructure.

“The roof of the mill has finally succumbed to the years of weather it has endured and is in grave need of being replaced,” the nonprofit Friends group said in an online fundraising announcement.

Jeffrey Berry, the mill’s caretaker, is a roofer by trade and well aware of the labor, materials and effort required to replace the mill’s roofs — one on the main structure and another atop a small blacksmith shop — in a historically accurate way.

It can be tricky to find volunteer roofers who have worked with cedar shake roofs, Berry said.

The material isn’t as popular these days, due to wildfire threats, and many newer roofers may have limited cedar shake experience.

Still, Berry is hopeful the volunteer group he’s been a part of for 26 years will find a way to replace the mill’s leaky roof — either using volunteer laborers or raising enough money to pay for professionals — before it falls into a worse state of disrepair.

Even with donated materials, it would cost about $60,000 to hire professional roofers, he said.

Fundraisers and donations have brought in more than $20,000, Berry said, and a small group of volunteers will soon replace the blacksmith shop’s cedar shake roof.

Berry said he will gauge that group’s work to see if it might also be able to tackle the larger mill roof.

He has some of the needed materials, including 60 wood skip-sheathing boards donated by Michael Rotschy, owner of Rotschy Timber Management in Amboy.

The blacksmith shop’s roof was built in 2001, Berry said, while the main mill roof was built in 1986. Beams above the mill’s second story seem to indicate that, prior to the 1980s update, the roof hadn’t been redone since 1930.

In its Raise the Roof campaign, the Friends group said “leaks, damage and rising repair costs threaten this treasured piece of local history.”

A new roof, they say, will protect the Cedar Creek Grist Mill for generations to come.