PHOTOS BY JEFF GRANIT staff

Clockwise from top left: Local historians, including Joe Sapia pictured Tuesday in a vacant snuff mill room, have been visiting the mill buildings in part to salvage items prior to the pending redevelopment project and also to take photos and document their findings. The Helmetta mill, which dates to 1877, ceased packing the product in 1993. Sapia looks at one of the machines used in the production of snuff, which is a generic term for fine-ground smokeless tobacco products. Chuck Tint, project manager for mill redeveloper Kaplan Cos., stands in the doorway of one of the manufacturing rooms. Narrow stairways such as this one are found throughout the mill. Sapia points out features of the covered bridge that connects mill buildings.