with a side trip to Hyde Blacksmith Shop and the old stage stop
A favorite stop for local photographers is Hyde’s Mill, in Iowa County Wisconsin near Ridgeway. It must be the most photographed old mill in the state! But the drive through Hyde Valley will also take you by many other picturesque sites, including an old blacksmith shop, stage stop, and the one-time Hyde store, now a local watering hole for hunters, football fans, and wandering photographers.
We’ll start and finish with what most take as the highlight: the rare old wooden water wheel mill. First built by settler William Hyde in 1850, it burned down in 1870 and was rebuilt by “Ted” Sawle at its original site next to the 1850s stone dam. To get there, you’ll want to drive about five miles north of Ridgeway (or seven miles south of Arena) on County Highway H, or just google “Hyde’s Mill.” You’ll turn off Highway H on (not surprisingly) Mill Road.
The Sawle family owned the mill from 1931 until around 2012. According to a Wisconsin State Journal article, the site includes “the wooden mill house, its idle wheel, eight acres of land and a hydroelectric plant that generates up to $300 worth of electricity a month.” The current owners prefer to not be identified.
It appears that the Sawle family, making a virtue of necessity, developed quite a collection of old mill stones! They’re lined up to the left of Mill Creek on old Mill Road. We’ll leave it to you to interpret the Biblical verse that introduces them.
While you’re in the area, you might want to take a five-minute drive south on Highway H through Hyde Valley, which is itself a beautiful drive. You’ll go past a little tavern, which for generations served as the Hyde Valley general store. Rumor has it that it’s a great place to watch Packer games!
If you keep going south, you’ll get to the Hyde Blacksmith shop. This yellow-stone building contains quite a story. According to Jeanie Lewis in her 2012 Dodgeville Chronicle article, the shop was originally located down the road at the Dick Keene farm, but taken apart brick by brick in 2000. For a few years, the stones were stored inside while the Hyde Blacksmith Shop Territory committee raised funds.
In 2008, a local stone mason, Art Kirsch, offered to rebuild the shop for a fraction of the estimated cost, something the Territory group considered a “godsend.” Rebuild it he did, at its current location on the Ruggle’s farm on County Highway H.
Hyde Blacksmith Shop usually hosts an open house and family days in June or July, though it was cancelled this year due to COVID-19. For next year’s information, you might want to check their Facebook page.
The current Highway H runs along the old stage route, and the Ruggles’ farm includes one of the old stage stops. Before the trains came and went as a source of local transportation, the stagecoach was how early settlers made it from place to place. At that time, Hyde Valley was a thriving intersection and the main stage stop between what was then a much-larger Arena, Wisconsin and Wisconsin’s third oldest city, Mineral Point.
We’ll start this piece where we began, at the old Hyde Mill. Long-time owner Theodore “Ted” Sawle maintained it as a working mill for decades and became somewhat of a legend in the area. Along with making this water wheel, he crafted two others, one of which was the 18-foot-wheel still on display in Indiana, which he made for Daniel Boone’s brother, Squire Boone.
Ted Sawle also fought and won a heated 1970s battled with the DNR over water rights. The state does not want any mills or dams on navigable waterways… but the Hyde Mill and Dam had been in the valley years before the state made that decision. Sawle contested it and ultimately won. When he passed on in 2009, he was over 104 years old.
If you visit, please respect the many “no trespassing” signs in front. All of the photos taken here were taken from behind the fence, and its not hard to imagine that the old structure can’t really tolerate lots of people climbing around on it. Though Ted Sawle is gone, his warnings and desire to protect this beautiful old site still remain!
Unless noted, all photos by Terry Burns
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