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Walnut Hill Historic District (Knightdale, North Carolina)

Buildings and structures in Wake County, North CarolinaGothic Revival architecture in North CarolinaHistoric districts on the National Register of Historic Places in North CarolinaNRHP infobox with nocatNational Register of Historic Places in Wake County, North Carolina
Use mdy dates from August 2023Victorian architecture in North Carolina
Oaky Grove Methodist Episcopal Church NE
Oaky Grove Methodist Episcopal Church NE

The Walnut Hill Historic District is a collection of 40 family dwellings, agricultural outbuildings, and other structures and sites associated with the Walnut Hill Plantation and the Mial-Williamson and Joseph Blake farms near Shotwell, North Carolina. The historic district represents the post-Civil War growth of one of the largest agricultural centers in Wake County. It is situated primarily along the northeast end of Mial Plantation Road (State Road 2509) between its intersections with Major Slade and Smithfield Roads.The Walnut Hill Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in October 2000. The nearby Walnut Hill Cotton Gin and Oaky Grove Plantation have been listed in the National Register separately, in 1986 and 1993, respectively.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Walnut Hill Historic District (Knightdale, North Carolina) (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Walnut Hill Historic District (Knightdale, North Carolina)
Mial Plantation Road,

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Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 35.733888888889 ° E -78.445555555556 °
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Address

Mial Plantation Road

Mial Plantation Road
27610
North Carolina, United States
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Oaky Grove Methodist Episcopal Church NE
Oaky Grove Methodist Episcopal Church NE
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Nearby Places

Walnut Hill Cotton Gin
Walnut Hill Cotton Gin

The Walnut Hill Plantation cotton gin house was built in the mid to late 1840s by Alonzo T. Mial, a prominent planter and commission merchant in 19th century North Carolina. It is one of a few surviving cotton gin houses in the state, and is likely the only one to have retained the majority of its original ginning equipment.The gin house is a 2+1⁄2-story-tall, hand-hewn timber frame structure, approximately 36 feet (11 m) wide and 56 feet (17 m) deep. The frontmost two-thirds of the structure is supported by tall, 2 feet (0.61 m) thick granite ashlar pillars that form a square, open-air space on the ground floor in which the mule track and power shaft were located. The rear third of the gin house rests on short, granite rubble piers, and housed the ground-floor pressing and packaging rooms. Most of the ginning equipment resided on the second floor of the gin house. The third floor was used for storage of baled cotton. The gin was originally powered by two to four mules hitched to horizontal sweeps that turned the vertical power shaft. The power shaft was connected to a series of cog wheels that ultimately transferred power to the leather belt that drove the gin. In 1875, Mial replaced the mules with a 15-horsepower steam engine, which considerably increased the gin's production capacity. The gin house received a number of other upgrades as ginning technology progressed over the following fifty years. The Walnut Hill cotton gin ceased operation in the mid-1930s, shortly after the death of Millard Mial, Alonzo T. Mial's oldest son.