When David Remington went back to the Red House sawmill at Allegany State Park five years ago, he said the walls radiated the personality of the building.
“You can feel these people in here,” he said in a YouTube video. “You can feel the sweat and the work.”
Remington, who grew up in the park, once worked at the mill. His father put the steam-powered sawmill together in 1947 and ran it. It operated during the cooler months of the year because it would be too hot inside the mill during the summer.
While silent today, the mill, which was shuttered in 1997, will have a grand reopening for the public at 10 a.m. Saturday. From now on, it will be more of a museum than a noisy, steamy workplace.
Sitting behind a maintenance building off Allegany State Park Route 1 near Red House Lake, the sawmill will be open for tours from 10 a.m. to noon every Sunday from mid-May until Columbus Day weekend. Members of the Friends of Allegany State Park and the Allegany State Park Historical Society will lead them.
The mill sat empty for nearly two decades before park officials in 2015 asked the Friends of Allegany State Park to undertake its renovation.
“When they asked us to do this, we were all excited,” said Paul Crawford, president of the Friends of Allegany.
They thought it would take a couple of years.
Paul Crawford, president of the Friends of Allegany State Park, said the volunteers with the nonprofit group worked nine years to help restore…
By then the grounds around the building were overgrown and porcupines had…
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