2303. Go to the Graue Mill & Museum in Oak Brook

 When I was playing around finalizing plans for Girls Weekend,  I stumbled upon a place called Graue Mill & Museum in Oak Brook. We had plans to see Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art in Oak Brook so I added to the list in case we had time. We definitely did have time to check it out.

Graue Mill & Museum is located on the Salt Creek in the Forest Preserve in DuPage County. The mill and museum is open 10-4 Wed-Sun and is free to visit. There is a parking lot across the road. 

This was the perfect spot to hit on Sunday morning since it opened at 10. We figured being a mill there might be outdoor things to look at before the museum opened. Since it is part of the Forest Preserve, there is walking trail along the creek. Even if you don't want to check out the mill, the preserve looked like a great place for a walk.

Graue Mill & Museum is one of two operating water powered grist-mills in Illinois. Built in 1852, it served area farmers as a place to grind the grain into flour. The grist-mill ground all sorts of grains into flour and feed including wheat, barley, and corn. They do presentations on how the mill works on the weekends at 2. Unfortunately we couldn't stay for that. 

The first floor of the mill, shows how the mill operated. It is all wooden and uses simple machines to make run the actual mill. Mr. Graue was able to grind about 150 pounds of flour an hour using his innovative system by himself. 

In the basement you can see more of the gears and simple machines that ran the mill.

Upstairs is set up as a museum to show life in the 1850s. Back when the mill was operational, there was no floors it was just open space all the way to the ceiling.

The museum featured different rooms and buildings as you would find in the area back in the 1850s. It was not just a haphazard collection of artifacts. It was put together very concisely and made a lot of sense. 

This was definitely a hidden gem. Sometimes playing on Google Maps allows you to come across some hidden gems you may never have found before. Even if we didn't get here on girls weekend, it went on the bucket list because it sounded interesting and I wanted to check it out. If you find yourself in DuPage County, definitely go check out the Graue Mill & Museum.