PF_Trail

Consider how laborers managed to collect, move, and place such large boulders with no more than human and animal muscle. The dam once stood a few feet higher—enough to raise the level of the impoundment more than 12 feet above the outflow from the wheel at the mill. In 1908 at the near end of the dam, miller William M. Fling signed his name in wet concrete he used to cap and reinforce the dam.A bit beyond the dam, in 1814, African American Benjamin Kins and wife Letitia bought two acres spanning the creek and built a house. They were among the first black families in the area to own their own land. Benjamin had been born a slave in Calvert County, Maryland, about 1770, but owner John Talbott freed him when the Quakers abol-ished the use of slaves in 1776. Talbott Farm remains today just southeast of the village.

Its long, low branches indicate that it did not grow in a forest. Local villagers have nicknamed it “Old John” in memory of John Hough (1720-1797), a Waterford Quaker who owned thousands of acres and a number of mills in Loudoun. White oaks were favored by early settlers for building, baskets, barrels, flooring, furni-ture, and many other uses. Native Americans made flour from the acorns.

The large tree here is a green ash, an aging survivor of the 19th century. It and other ashes on the farm face an uncertain future with the recent arrival in the Washington area of the emerald ash borer, a destructive beetle native to Asia.

Here a small wet weather stream intersects the old hand-dug millrace, visible from the path at the left. Hikers can follow the dry bed of the race back to Ball’s Run at the site of “The Chute.” This channel, some two-thirds of a mile long, in all, was dug by hand, probably around 1760. Etched in the cement cap of the low stone containment wall here, is the date October 28, 1928, the initials of the last miller, William S. Smoot, and those of his 17-year-old helper, John E. Divine, who later helped preserve much of Waterford’s history.

Invasive plants such as multiflora rose, tree of heaven, autumn olive, Japanese barberry, and Canada thistle have been encroaching into the Phillips Farm environment for some time and are overtaking habitat of native flora. The tallest tree in front of you is a tree of heaven. The Management Plan for the Phillips Farm includes efforts to control the growth of invasive species, particularly in this area.

For 150 years this property flourished as a diversified family farm. In 1850 it produced wheat, corn, oats, beef, milk, butter, wool, hay, horses, pork, poultry, eggs, fruit and honey, as well as potatoes and other garden crops. The small white barn you see on the hillside shelters the machinery used today for haying the surrounding fields.

Ball’s Run, which here joins Catoctin Creek, once powered two Waterford mills a few hundred yards up-stream. But it presented a problem for owners of the mill at the foot of Main Street, who had dug a channel or millrace to carry water from a dam farther upstream on Catoctin Creek and needed to get that water past the Run, which flowed at a lower level. In the early years they probably built a wooden trough or aqueduct to carry the water over Ball’s Run. By the early 1900s, though, they had dammed the Run to bring it up to the level of the millrace. Then, by way of sluice gates, they could divert its water into the race to augment the flow to the mill in dry seasons. The over-flow was known as “The Chute,” and below the dam was a favorite swimming hole until time and repeated floods took their toll. Today only a stone buttress or two and scattered chunks of concrete mark the site of the dam. A short path to the left takes you to the spot.

Eastern bluebirds dwell on the Phillips Farm year round. Their numbers have declined nationwide due to habitat loss and competition from invasive bird species. If you follow the tree line along the millrace, from the mill to this point, you can see a “bluebird trail” of seven nesting boxes. The stovepipe below each box blocks climbing predators. Volunteers monitor the boxes from March through August. Ten baby bluebirds fledged from these boxes in 2008, the trail’s first year. With the help of man-made trails such as these, bluebird populations are recovering.