Rhode Island has many buildings, homes, inns, and taverns still intact from the colonial period. You may have noticed, however, that none of the images I've shown pre-date 1678 even though the Colony was founded in 1636. Before Roger Williams arrived, several Indian tribes including the Narragansett and Wampanoag tribes had settlements dating back several thousand years. Petroglyphs in nearby Connecticut show evidence of human habitation going back to the end of the last glacial retreat some 10,000 years ago. So why nothing prior to 1678? The answer is war. The most devastating war fought in Rhode Island was King Phillip's War (1675-78) which pitted the native tribes against the colonies of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. In three short years virtually every structure on both sides of the conflict was destroyed. After the war, the colony rebuilt. The four French and Indian Wars fought in North America - actually extensions of European wars between England, France, and Spain - didn't touch Rhode Island, so the colony had the luxury of expansive growth well into the 1770s.
Canonicut Island, which houses the town of Jamestown, suffered near total destruction under British occupation during the American Revolution. One casualty was the windmill that originally stood on this hill. It was rebuilt in 1787 and operated as a grist mill, stone-grinding corn into cattle feed, until 1896. The expansion of the west, the invention of the railroad, and a transition to steel-grinding (as a replacement for stone-grinding) all conspired to force eastern windmills such as this out of business. They could no longer compete economically. The Jamestown Historical Society took possession of it in 1912 and has operated it ever since. It is still kept in working condition, and every two years for one weekend, sails are attached to the arms and the windmill is operated to produce ground meal just as it did 116 years ago. The next operation of the mill will be July 14, 2012.
Post processing was a bit tricky since I needed to produce the proper contrast for the image to be effective. I did the black and white conversion using a gradient map in color blend mode. A deep blue filter was placed below the gradient map. I then adjusted the hue deeper into the blue, and cranked the saturation up extremely high to improve the contrast in the sky. A levels adjustment was added and then the contrast and brightness adjusted. The top layer was a sepia photo filter. All of the adjustments except the sepia filter were done beneath the gradient map.
