Museum Cooch-Dayett Mill

Located south of Newark near the corner of Old Baltimore Pike and Route 72, Cooch-Dayett Mills is one of the last remaining water-powered mills in Delaware.

Mills were a vital part of colonial society.  They served as centers of commerce and socialization for the surrounding community.  Farmers depended upon the specialized machinery in mills to process wheat and corn from their fields into flour and cornmeal. Both to be used as food for people and animals, as well as to sell.

The Cooch-Dayett Mills was originally constructed in the 1830s by William Cooch, Jr., however there is evidence of mill activity on the site as early as the 1720s.  The property was well suited for milling in the pre-industrial era using the nearby Christina River as a power source to run the machinery.

Water from the river was diverted through a man-made channel or “race” just north of Cooch’s Bridge.  The race directed water past the mill and turned a water wheel before rejoining the Christina.

A system of gears and pulleys connected the water wheel to the equipment inside the mill.  Mechanisms in the mill carried wheat and corn up and down the four floors of the building and moved it through stages of processing to become flour or cornmeal.

Oliver Evans, a Delaware native from Newport, is credited with designing the interconnected machines that allowed one person to successfully operate a mill with several floors of equipment running simultaneously.

Cooch-Dayett Mills survived two fires and was rebuilt, updated and retrofitted over the years enabling the facility to remain in operation into the 1980s.  The State of Delaware purchased the mill in 1996 to preserve this special cultural resource and with the intent of developing the site as a museum.

The Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs assumed control of the facilities and property; has performed significant work cleaning up the site from years of industry, as well as preserving and stabilizing the aging structure.

The Division, however, did not have the capacity to keep the site open and physically accessible to the public.

This virtual museum of the Cooch-Dayett Mill has been brought to you by the Department of State, Division of Historical & Cultural Affairs.