"Before electrification, spring houses were used throughout the Ozarks as cold storage facilities for food and other perishables. The construction date of this example is unknown."

This impressive, stone-laid spring house has a prominent place in local historical memory. A number of local folks who have visited the site, or who we have talked to in other contexts, remember getting the "sweet" water from the large spring house in Van Hollow.

When Jerry Hilliard first visited the site in 1985, the spring house still had its tin roof and wooden gable attached. By the time the Van Winkle project was underway, however, the roof was gone and the spring had filled in with soil eroding off the from the steep slope above.

During the 1997 initial work on the Van Winkle project we cleaned out the mill and mapped and sketched the stonework.