Springmill Road has had that name for at least 150 years, and it is named for a Spring and a Mill that, amazingly enough, both still exist.
It is named Springfield Township because there are innumerable places in the landscape where water just rushes out of the ground. One of the most powerful of these sources is at Spring Mill.
Pioneers recognized value of such a forceful fountain immediately, and by 1817 there was a sawmill there taking advantage of the irrepressible power of the rushing stream. Before the 1830s the mill was re-constructed with heavy millstones to grind grain, turned by a great waterwheel.
The flour mill at Spring Mill was a profitable business in the 1830s, and was owned by a Mansfield attorney, Mordecai Bartley, whose subsequent career in politics was similarly successful, powering him all the way to become the Governor of Ohio.
As late as the 1930s and ’40s the Spring Mill was operational for grinding flour, but in the ’50s the mechanical parts of the mill were salvaged by the Amish, and the place was converted into a private residence, as it remains today.
Because it sits on a dead-end road the Spring Mill is not readily apparent, but it can be recognized by the mill pond, seen from State Rt. 39, on the east side of the highway, almost a mile north of the OSU Mansfield Campus entrance.
For more background on Spring Mill check out Water-Powered Mills of Richland County by Robert A. Carter, 2016.
