Where Is it Answer

Democrat-Gazette file photo
Democrat-Gazette file photo

The Old Mill in North Little Rock's T.R. Pugh Memorial Park ranks among Arkansans' favorite photo backdrops. We grew up liking the fact that it appears briefly in the opening credits of the 1939 movie Gone With the Wind.

But it was not built to be a movie set. No one knows how it wound up in the movie.

[RELATED: Where Is It? quiz]

The park, at 3800 Lakeshore Drive, was dedicated in 1933. It was an amenity for the subdivision that developer Justin Matthews (1875-1955) envisioned rising around the six man-made lakes he finished damming in 1932. Developing Lakewood and Park Hill to compete with Pulaski Heights, he wanted something unique to draw upscale homebuyers.

Frank Carmean of the Matthews company designed the two-story stone structure to suggest a 19th-century grist mill. But the Pugh the park is named for was not an original settler who built and then abandoned his mill in the 1820s. He was Thomas R. Pugh of Portland in Ashley County, Matthews' friend and benefactor.

Mexican sculptor Dionicio Rodriguez created evocative hard-scaping in and around the mill, including the 5-ton cement-and-steel water wheel and the rustic fake-wood bridge, rails, benches, toadstool and hollow trunks that resemble stone or petrified logs.

Not far to the south, Interstate 40 flows through a lowland formerly known as Loomis Lake, after a 19th-century lumberman who did have a mill on the high ground — a lumber mill. The swamp was also called Dark Hollow.

Style on 03/18/2019

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