Stockmühlen am Kalserbach

Seven stock mills line the Kalserbach stream in the village of Kals am Großglockner, East Tirol. Five of these mills are protected monuments and together they form a rare collection of farm-built machinery from the 16th to 18th centuries. One mill, the Rogler, was swept away by floods in 2018, leaving six still standing. The mills carry the local names of their former owners—Pahl, Plotzer, Obenfiger, Kerer, Hofer/Uhl and Taurer—and each has a horizontal water wheel that turns a vertical shaft driving the millstone directly. Their small square buildings are timber-framed and roofed with flat wooden shingles, fed by wooden troughs that carry water from the stream. In the 1950s more than fifty such mills still worked in the valley, but when farming gave way to cattle breeding most fell out of use and began to decay. Restoration began in 1975 when owners and the local mill society worked together to bring the mills back to working order. Today six mills run again, occasionally grinding flour for local households and demonstrating their simple technology to visitors in summer. The Kalser Mühlenverein keeps the tradition alive, showing how water power once turned grain into meal for the farms of the Grossglockner region.