Mill

This timber-frame structure set into the hillside overlooks Berlin. A wood trestle supported carts transporting ore to the top of the building, where the ore passed through a thirty-stamp mill that broke it into smaller pieces. Gradually the ore was crushed to a pulp, heated, then mixed with mercury, which adhered to the gold and silver in the ore. The precious metals were then separated from the mercury and converted into bullion. A long shed roof covered with standing-seam metal slopes over the board-and-batten-sided walls, terminating at the base of the mill. In the 1970s the state undertook a major stabilization of the building, hiring architect Edward S. Parsons of Reno, who had worked on other historic preservation projects in the state, to reconstruct the roof.