The 2016 Rhody Warm
HUNTSVILLE COLLECTION
from our Lost Village Series

Now it is just a crossroad in the Town of Burrillville, being the junction of Wallum Lake Road and East Wallum Lake Road with a little corner park surrounded by open field. But once this was Huntsville, originally called Turkeytown, a village which began along the Clear River with Arnold Hunt's establishment of a wooden mill in 1834.

Located in the eastern part of Bridgeton in the Town of Burrillville, Huntsville had a second mill operating by the 1850's. One of the mills was known as the White Mill, and still remembered by some locals today.

As the village grew, the mills expanded, worker housing and a schoolhouse were added. By the 1875 census, Huntsville boasted a population of 147. Woolen goods continued to be produced there throughout the rest of the 19th Century and well into the 20th Century.

Unfortunately, manufacturing had ceased by 1960. The empty mills were destroyed by fire in 1969 and the remains were later torn down.