Potter's Mill

Potter's Mill
Ryan P. Wilson

On Tom Sawyer Island there are lots of caves, bridges, hideaways, and even a fort to explore. For youngsters it is a playground paradise, but for those who know the tales of Tom Sawyer, it is literature come to life. But one piece of the island has a history that is even more storied than the rest of the island, Muff Potter’s Mill.

Muff Potter’s Mill, with its green slats and slowly churning windmill may not look like it from the outside, but inside it pays homage to one of the earliest Disney films. 1937’s The Old Mill, which was the first film to use the multiplane camera, featured the life and times of, you guessed it, an old mill. The dilapidated mill in the film bears little to no resemblance to Potter’s Mill, but the inhabitants are one in the same. Inside the windmill guests’ gaze is beckoned upward by the hoots of the sleepy owl and the luck of the bird who built her nest in one of the gears holds steady, as the gear it crosses just happens to be missing the prong that would surely cause her harm, and both of these elements can also be found in The Old Mill.