The Postbellum "Golden Age." Peter and company returned to Van Hollow in 1866 and rebuilt the community, including a two-story house, a raised garden and "the most modern and powerful mill in the west" (Easley and McAnelly 1996:157; Hicks 1990:25).

The house (shown on the right) and mill were finished by at least 1870. Van Winkle's Mill dominated the regional market in the 1870s and provided the lumber for the postbellum rebuilding of Fayetteville as well as many of the public buildings built following the war. This included the 1871 building of the Arkansas Industrial University (now known as the 'Old Main' building of the University of Arkansas) and the 1872 Bentonville Courthouse.

The machinery was purchased from a St. Louis firm, shipped via barge down the Mississippi River and up the Arkansas River to Van Buren, Arkansas. From there it was shipped overland through the rugged Boston Mountains and up to Van Hollow. "Roads had to be chopped, bridges improvised, camps maintained, food provided for men and oxen. The story of that trip should be worthy of a saga" (Rothrock 1973:65). More specifically and dramatically, it has been widely described as "an epic probably unsurpassed to that time except by the Egyptians in propelling on rollers the heavy blocks of stone cut from the quarries to the distant spots for erecting their pyramids" (Rose 1953).

The new mill's equipment included a 150 horsepower engine (with a 22" x 30" cylinder) powered by three steam boilers driving the large, legendary flywheel with a smoke stack 60 feet high and five feet in diameter that towered over the whole affair. Several auxiliary-manufacturing facilities were also added and the workshops at Peter's mill could produce cabinetry, doors, and windows. With this mill, Peter "developed the most extensive lumber business in the southwest" (Fayetteville Sentinel February 15, 1882) and became the "wealthiest man in this section of the country." He added many improvements, established other mills and purchased thousands of acres of pine lands until he owned nearly all the pineries in Benton, Madison and Carroll Counties" (Easley and McAnelley 1996:157).

Van Winkle's Mil ca. 1870 showing gistmill and
sawmill facilities along with the lumber yard.

By 1880, Peter's mill was producing 1,300,000 board feet of lumber annually valued at approximately $134,250. His steam engine with three boilers powering a circular saw, two rip saws, two molding saws, one gang lathe, one shingle machine, two planers and a variety of other machines, easily out-paced the other water-powered sawmills in War Eagle Township.

In 1880--after a year of construction--he opened one of the first three-story hotels in Northwest Arkansas located on Center Street in downtown Fayetteville (shown to the left).

The Van Winkle's ballroom hosted a continuous stream of galas and celebrations. Additionally, he continued his campaign for modernization, as he was instrumental in bringing the railroad to Fayetteville and apparently provided much of the funds to build its depot. He was seen as "a man of progress" and "was the first man in War Eagle to have a telephone, a line having been installed in 1880 from Fayetteville to his mill" (Scott 1962:171).