Blue Ox Millworks

Working Victorian mill producing hand-crafted gingerbread trim

A working Victorian mill at 1st and X Streets that produces hand-crafted gingerbread trim, turned posts, and decorative woodwork using period machinery. The mill offers guided tours of the production floor, a Victorian-era skate park, a brick kiln, and a rose garden. It is an unusual combination — part living history, part functioning workshop — and considerably more interesting than a static museum.

The woodwork produced here has supplied restoration projects up and down the West Coast. Walking through the production floor, you can watch craftsmen operating band saws, lathes, and spindle shapers that date to the era the finished products are meant to evoke. Open Monday through Saturday; check current tour times at 707/444-3437.

things to do old town sight architecture
A story
The mill was founded by Eric Hollenbeck, who started it in 1973 to save the Victorian woodworking traditions that were dying out when the last millwrights retired. He taught himself the old techniques from scraps of documentation and restored period equipment, then turned the whole operation into a working demonstration that now supplies gingerbread trim to Victorian restorations across the country.