Kenyon's Grist Mill is the historic home of the Rhode Island Johnny Cake, and its slabs of Westerly granite have been grinding corn and other meal since at least 1696. The Kenyon Grist Mill offers tours, hosts private events, and holds regular weekend events and festivals. It even stone grinds rye for the Rhode Island Rye project, a movement to make a rye bread grown, processed, and produced entirely with products and labor of Rhode Island origin.
Owner and caretaker Paul Drumm III inherited the mill from his father, and learned his trade growing up. "My father bought the mill when I was 10," he said. "There was this Native American gentleman, Charley Walmsley, who had worked and lived here from when he was twelve years old until the day he died, in his eighties. I can remember him taking me fishing when I was real young, and my father and he would teach me how to run the mill. To this day, we've kept a sign with his name on his house. He is sorely missed."