McMahon’s Mill at Mile 88.1 on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath

McMahon’s Mill is located at Mile 88.1 on the C&O Canal towpath. The street address is 7900 Avis Mill Road, Williamsport, MD 21795. See the Locks and Lockhouses web page for an interactive location map.

McMahon’s Mill at Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park is a grist mill that was built around 1778. It operated until 1922 under a variety of owners. The mill did not close due to a lack of business, but because of damage it sustained in a flood.

William McMahon, from whom the mill takes its current name, was the most recent owner. McMahon purchased the property in the 1960s, and he and his wife lived in an existing house on the property. The National Park Service acquired the mill for Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park in 1976. Restoration was done over the next few years.

In 1976, McMahon built a 4,000-square-foot building to the west of the old mill, then he and his wife opened a campground and a restaurant. When the restaurant closed in the early 1980s, McMahon turned the building into the McMahon’s Mill Civil War Military and American Heritage Museum and filled it with artifacts from the 1800s and 1900s. As McMahon grew old (his wife died in 2008), the museum and campground became run down (“straight out of a horror movie” wrote one reviewer in 2013) until it finally closed in 2016. McMahon died in December 2017.

A hundred yards or so downstream are the ruins of some sort of stone building. If you look inside the doorway you can see a fireplace. I can’t find mention of this building anywhere on the Internet, so I have no idea what it once was.