The Old Mill at T. R. Pugh Memorial Park
Near Little Rock, Arkansas
That weathered grist mill across the water is a fake, and a famous one. It was built in nineteen thirty-three, deliberately designed to look like a crumbling relic from the eighteen hundreds. The Mexican-born sculptor Dionicio Rodriguez shaped every detail out of concrete made to mimic wood, iron, and stone, including the tree-branch footbridges and the toadstools scattered through the park.
It honors Thomas Pugh, the business partner of developer Justin Matthews, who built it to anchor a new North Little Rock neighborhood.
Its real claim to fame came six years later. The Old Mill appears in the opening moments of the nineteen thirty-nine film Gone with the Wind, and it is widely believed to be the only structure from that movie still standing today. It is now on the National Register of Historic Places.
