Clinton and the Red Mill

The town of Clinton on the South Branch of the Raritan grew around an early nineteenth century mill, and its very name reflects the ambitions of the era. Around eighteen ten, industrialist Ralph Hunt built a woolen mill here, and the place was called Hunt's Mills. When John Bray and John Taylor took over in the late eighteen twenties, they rechristened it Clinton in honor of DeWitt Clinton, the popular New York governor who had just completed the Erie Canal.

The mill itself went through a long series of lives, wool, flour, feed, stone plaster, and eventually peach baskets. The landmark Red Mill, painted in its famous crimson, is now the centerpiece of an open-air museum on the National Register of Historic Places, one of the most photographed buildings in New Jersey.