Mill House Lodge

Mill House and the Mill House Lodge have served Western NC and Upstate SC for over 200 years. In its early years, the Mill provided ground corn and wheat products to Hendersonville and Asheville, NC and Spartanburg and Greenville, SC. In the mid 1900's the Mill was converted to a motel and several buildings were added to house the visiting tourists... . The Lodge now serves to provide travelers with a variety of comfortable accommodations and picturesque scenery. When you scan the list of accommodations, you'll notice that several of the buildings are named for previous owners, i.e. Summey House and Rhodes Cottage. The Jordan Lodge is named for Will Jordan, a leading miller of flour, meal, bran, chicken feed and other water-ground products. Mr. Jordan operated the mill on this site for more than 50 years. The history of Mill House Lodge revolves around the Old Mill. It begins in 1830 when Peter Summey took out a land grant for the property. Mr Summey was a miller and picked this site on King's Creek in Flat Rock because the stream was just right for putting up an undershot wheel to operate his mill. He ran the mill for 16 years. In 1846, Summey sold his property. The property changed hands several more times and through the years the Old Mill has served as a Post Office, hotel, furniture factory, and flour mill. In 1949, Eugen Brown of Charlotte acquired the Old Mill on a property trade. His original idea was to make a summer home from the mill building but upon removing the milling machinery, he realized the space was ideal for apartments. Thus, he started what was called the Old Mill Apartments. The location was ideally situated and soon became "the place" to lodge when visiting Western North Carolina. During this time, the Old Mill Apartments grew from the original building to five. In 1989, Ty and June Rhodes expanded the operation to its present size of six buildings and into what is now known as the Mill House Lodge. The Kinneys owned and operated the property from 1995 until April 2003. The Mill House ...Read More