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Birch River Monthly Spotlight May 2001 - Boggs Falls & Mill Upper Birch River is quite small but it does boast the largest falls on the entire river and the site of the quintessential water mill, although the mill no longer stands. The falls are located one-half mile below Barnett Run in Webster County, near the hamlet of Boggs and have a drop of approximately sixteen feet. It is quite spectacular when there is a good water flow and the pool at the base of the falls is an idyllic picture-postcard setting framed by rocks and rhododendron.Myrtle Robert Riddle of Boggs was born near the falls and was naturally attracted to the swimming hole at an early age. To discourage her from going there unattended, her parents always told her that there was "a turtle as big as a washtub" that lived under the rock that served as a diving board. That story worked for awhile, she recalled recently, but "I began of to have doubts because I never saw the turtle and soon it had no effect on me." In 1954, one of the largest floods in upper Birch history, a remnant of Hurricane Hazel, struck the area and earned the sobriquet of the "hog flood". Ella Hollandsworth of Boggs kept a hog in a pen near the river and the porker was washed downstream about a mile and a half, where it was rescued by a local resident just before it went over the falls. The now nonexistent water mill was built in 1883 by Bearhunter Billy Barnett, who gained renown for his fight with a bear on the headwaters of Barnett Run. The original mill sat on the bank immediately below the falls: a replacement was later built on top of the falls, where a flume fed the water to turn the wheel. The flume was chiseled out of the rock ledge at the top of the falls and is still visible to this day. The W. L. McCoy family purchased the mill from Bearhunter Billy and operated it and a 1930's replacement for many years. The replacement mill was damaged in the 1954 flood and was eventually dismantled. Ruby Boggs Roberts, who died in 1993, attempted to have the mill rebuilt as a tourist attraction when she was president of the Webster County Development Commission but was unsuccessful. Many such mills were sprinkled along Birch in the late 1800's and early 1900's and were used mainly for grinding corn.
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