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• Starch Factories <br /> Starch factories manufactured potato starch and provided Elk <br /> River area farmers with another market for their produce.One <br /> factory was opened in 1890 by T.S.Nickerson,and another in <br /> 1910 by C.H.Caley. About 1914, another factory was <br /> founded to manufacture boxes for market crops. <br /> Grain Elevators <br /> r <br /> ; <br /> III <br /> Graves and Bailey Grain Elevator,Highway 10.Photo 2002. <br /> The Graves and Bailey Grain Elevator was constructed in 1922 <br /> on the Jefferson Highway opposite Oak Street. It replaced O.J. <br /> Whitman's feed mill on the same site. Adjacent to potato and <br /> coal warehouses and the Northern Pacific Freight House, it <br /> appears to be the structure at this location today. Another <br /> elevator owned by the Elk River Milling Company was located <br /> across the tracks to the north. <br /> Elk River's flour milling on the Elk River ended with the <br /> devastating flood of 1912, and saw <br /> devastating closed with the <br /> Houlton planning mill fire in 1923. (Check these dates.: what <br /> about flour elevator?) This reflected the general demise of <br /> flour and lumber industries in centers such as Minneapolis and <br /> Stillwater,but some early flour mills have persisted and grown <br /> to the present time, as operating mills in Northfield and <br /> Hastings attest. <br /> In Elk River as in other river towns, the mill owners acquired <br /> considerable wealth and were influential citizens.While Ard <br /> Godfrey had only a speculative interest in Elk River, the <br /> Houlton and Nickerson families were engaged in milling and <br /> banking for several generations, despite a series of devastating <br /> mill and downtown fires and the statewide general decline in <br /> IIIlumber and flour milling at the turn of the century. <br /> Draft 5/2002 <br /> Elk River Historic Contexts Study <br /> 30 <br />