| The Magazine of the CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES |
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Here At The Academy Millstones Around Our Courtyard Every day in the Academy’s central courtyard, hundreds of children race around the whale fountain, pigeons swoop down for crumbs, and tourists pose for snapshots—all oblivious to the cultural heritage beneath their feet. Embedded in the concrete patio are five nineteenth century millstones, inscribed with bronze plaques. Each of these ancient, furrowed stones has a story to tell about the early days of European settlement in California, the millwrights who fashioned them, and the millers who used them. They witnessed the onset of the Industrial Revolution and, when mechanization proved more profitable, they came to rest in the most unlikely of places—a museum of natural history.
The story of the millstones begins around 1850, just as the nascent Academy began to take shape. Ranging from three to four feet in diameter, the millstones came in pairs. Powered by a windmill or waterwheel, the carefully chiseled surface of the top stone ground grain against the stationary bottom stone. The Academy’s stones are work-worn, having served their masters well until the end of the nineteenth century. Though most worn stones were discarded, some local history enthusiasts and antiquarians managed to preserve a few as a reminder of a slower, more agrarian society. These fortunate stones survived their retirement intact. Four were displayed by the Sperry Flour Company at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. Even then, they were symbols of an earlier, pre-industrial age. When the fair ended, Sperry’s donated the millstones to the Academy. Today, each stone bears a bronze plaque identifying its source: Sperry Mill, Stockton, 1852; Buckeye Mill, Marysville, 1863; Starr Mill, Vallejo, 1869; and Golden Gate Flour Mills, 1857. According to its plaque, this last was “brought by sailing vessel around the Horn.” The other three stones may also have been quarried in Europe, but there are no substantiating records. According to Academy geologist Jean DeMouthe, the millstones consist of quartz-rich rock of distant origin. Most, she says, were probably used as ballast in ships skirting South America. In 1942 the Academy acquired an even older millstone, originally from the Chiles Mill in Napa Valley. There, ranching pioneer Joseph B. Chiles built the first American flour mill in California in 1845—after paying $10 for a grant of 8,545 acres from the territory’s Mexican governor. Weighing over 1,000 pounds, the massive hand-chiseled round was used until the mill’s closure in 1880. It languished on site until the Chiles family donated it to the Academy. All the millstones were initially installed in front of North American Hall in 1950. When construction started on Cowell Hall in 1967, they were uprooted and reset in their present location. The courtyard holds a final surprise. A sixth millstone lies hidden amid the courtyard’s vegetation. It is not set in the ground but sits forlornly among the vegetation at the base of the Ksan totem pole. This stone is different, a cruder version of its companions with no apparent aesthetic charm. This is the oldest of all the Academy’s stones and of significant historic value. Documentation in the Academy’s archives connects it to Mission Santa Clara, founded in 1777. The padres planted wheat, but did not mill their flour on site. Instead, they hauled their grain ten miles south to the Old Gilroy mill, original home of the stone. The Gilroy stone remained at the mill site long after it had served its purpose, until Jesse B. Agnew of the Pacific Seed Growers Company was moved to donate it to the Academy in 1919. It had not been part of a water or windmill complex; rather, it formed the upper and lower units of a Spanish colonial mule-driven arrastra. Crudely cut from locally-quarried sandstone, it had the capacity to grind three bags of flour a day. Agnew described it as “the first mill-stone ever used in California. Its shape is irregular because it was made before the time of steel tools in California. It was used by the Mexicans and Indians at Old Gilroy and powered by an old white mule.” In its present location, the stone bears no identifying plaque, and the only clue to its function is a pair of iron rings, which served as lifting aids, that protrude from its upper surface. These millstones are memorials to the countless millwrights who left no written record of their trade. But their journey is not complete. After the Academy closes its doors in Golden Gate Park on December 31 and is rebuilt, the courtyard will be transformed. No decision has been made as to the next location of the stones, but these enduring time capsules will find a home somewhere in the new Academy. June Anderson is the Traditional Arts Supervisor at the California Academy of Sciences. |
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