For season 4 of the Geminate podcast, we are diving deeper into the story of yarn from our area and beyond! And we’re including a few field trips to local fiber-related locations. We took our first field trip in May to the Watkins Woolen Mill State Historic Site!
The Watkins Woolen Mill historic site is part of Watkins Mill State Park. Located about 10 minutes outside of Kearney, Missouri (or Excelsior Springs, Missouri depending on which direction you turn) this is one of Missouri’s State Parks. The historic house plus mill tour was only $5. It was absolutely worth the trip and I hope you go if you get the chance!
The house and history of the area was interesting.
But for a fiber person, the tour inside the actual wool mill was awesome!!! They built the mill in 1860 and closed it in 1898. It feels like visiting a snapshot in time to step inside. I mainly took a boatload of pictures while Sherri and our tour guide William wore the microphones for our podcast recording.
We started at the back of the 4-story mill building where the main wheel and steam engine for the mill are located. Only part of the wheel was visible from the floor up and just that was a good bit taller than we were. The steam engine has only run once in recent memory so the back room was quiet and still during our visit. But it was easy to imagine just how loud and hot that area must have been when the mill was running.
The absolute best part of the tour was seeing all the machines!!! From the engine room, we moved past the areas where the wool was washed, dried, combed, spun, plied, and eventually warped onto the looms where the cloth was woven. The tour led us through the first floor, second floor, and third floor of the mill following the path the wool would have taken from fleece to woven fabric.
We saw loom after loom ready for a warp to be threaded. Some of the looms were normal 36-inch to 48-inch floor looms that weavers might have at home (I had one about that size for years). But some of them were industrial size with the weaving area at least 12 feet wide plus hardware on either side.
We saw a spinning jenny machine to take the fiber from roving to yarn that spanned the entire length of the third floor. Parts of this machine looked like they were manufactured at the same time as the metal wheels and wooden parts on my great-great-great grandmother’s treadle sewing machine that I inherited.
We saw several carding machines for wool and each one was easily the size of a SUV.
The museum at the Visitor Center is full of details and interesting bits.
The Watkins Woolen Mill State Historic Site was a really excellent fiber stop and absolutely worth the trip. I really do hope you go if you get the chance!
I’m super excited about Season 4 of the Geminate podcast where we’ll talk a lot more about the story of yarns! We have more field trips planned, books to review, and yarns to interview. I wrote a blog post about the story of yarn here.
