Steve Frost, 72, with the Little Beaver Historical Society, shows some of the processing equipment inside the McConnells Mill State Park gristmill in July that the group is restoring. Butler Eagle File Photo

The state parks in Butler County got a few face-lifts in 2022.

Members of the Little Beaver Historical Society have been working on the historic gristmill at McConnells Mill State Park every Tuesday for the past three years. The mill hasn’t operated in decades, but the society is restoring and refurbishing pieces of it so it can someday give demonstrations for visitors of the park.

Steve Frost, a “display animation” historian from Darlington, started the project after his son, Michael Frost, a park ranger at Ohiopyle in Fayette County, said it likely could be restored to the point where the machinery would work as it is supposed to.

“We’re not going to mill anything, but we are going to make it work like it worked,” Frost said. “A lot (of equipment) is where it would have been; we just choose what we want to work on.”

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