The teenagers across the country have all ready found mills as abandoned structures as places to recreate in. Tearing a mill down does not solve the teenagers' problems or our cultural problems and we would lose a lot of history in the process. Mills are important artifacts. A museum is just a building which contains artifacts. Mills are more, they carry information about history, change, people, and in the process give a better understanding about ourselves.
Mills are very costly to restore.
What most often happens is a group gets the wrong understanding, once you have put the big bucks into a mill restoration, you never have to do that again. Mills require a lot of attention and maintenance. The best way to preserve a mill is to operate it, and the more it's operated, the better it's maintained. Some mills that have been restored may now operated one or two days a year. Mills are affected by seasonal and climatic conditions, they were never intended to operate on an off and on basis, which ends up being mostly idle.