Cedar Mills and the Iron Furnace of Cedar Run

The community known as Cedar Mills takes its name from the mills that once lined Cedar Run in the early eighteen hundreds. According to the local marker, an early mill served a nearby iron furnace, and a later grist mill was converted to steam power in the eighteen sixties.

This cycle of water power, iron production, and steam conversion repeated itself across southern Ohio in the first half of the nineteenth century, as the region tried to build an industrial economy from its forests, creeks, and iron-rich hills before railroads changed everything.