Thomas Jefferson himself is said to have admired this stretch of land outside Charlottesville in 1800 and pointed a friend toward buying it. In 1834, Martin Dawson, a financial advisor to Jefferson, built a waterwheel gristmill on the property along the Hardware River. The mill survived the Civil War despite orders from Generals Grant and Custer to burn buildings along their march through the area, and it kept grinding grain for another sixty years after the war ended.
When the modern resort went up in the early 1960s, builders dismantled the abandoned mill piece by piece and rebuilt it as the heart of the new Boar’s Head Inn, reusing its heartwood pine beams, plank flooring, and even the original millstones, now set in the courtyard below the dining room. The University of Virginia Foundation has owned the resort since 1989, and it’s been a Historic Hotels of America member since 2001.