National Register Listing

Golda's Mill

a.k.a. Bitting Springs Mill

12 mi. NW of Stilwell, Stilwell, OK

Historic "facts" are hard to come by concerning the earliest use of what are now known as Bitting Springs to grind meal. Or of the waters of "Bidding" Creek into which the springs drain. (Dr. Nicholas Bitting settled here sometime after 1876. The logical corruption of Bitting to Bidding was officially incorporated into the name of the nearby stream and -- from Det. 19, 1912, to June 15, 1928 -- of the post office serving the community.) Legend has it that meal was ground here in the late 1830s or early 18408. Somewhat more substantial is evidence of the existence shortly after the Civil War of a crude gristmill powered by a water wheel turned directly by the water of the creek it solf and controlled by a simple dam and water gate.

According to the recollections of Mrs. Catharine Murray, daughter of Dr. Bitting, this mill was owned by her aunt, Mary Taylor. But it had disappeared or was in ruins when her aunt died and her mother inheritor the property. She was 12 or 13 at the time. She knows that it was her father who first used the springs to develop the mill pretty much as it is today. Ho constructed the mill pond, dug the race that now runs between the house and the mill, installed a big wooden wheel to power the grinding buhrs. He began operating the mill in 1882 or 1883 and was so busy for a time, she recalls, that she and her brother sometimes relieved him at the end of a day and ground meal throughout the night. The Bittings ran the mill until sometime in the 1890s.

(On one occasion, Mrs. Murray recalls, her father heard that the Cherokees back in the hills were starving. He sent word for them to come for free meal, giving it away at first by the bushel. Only when so many needy came that he was afraid he might run out did he reduce the portion to a bucketful per Indian. ...Dr. Bitting was a Methodist preacher. According to the 1890 Goingsnake District Census, he had a wife, Mary Jane, and six children. Catharine, who married R. W. Murray in 1888, was not included.)

Next operator of the Bitting Springs Mill was the Worley family. J. C. Worley was in charge from about 1908 to 1928. It was he who replaced the old wooden wheel with the all-metal one now in use. (The cost was said to have been $2,600.) Son Luther and Ord Lee, a grand son, followed him. They kept the machinery intact but did considerable rebuilding of the mill it self. Then in 1945 they, too, shut it down.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1972.