Prehistoric and Euroamerican Archaeology of Elk River, Minnesota: Current Knowlege and Probability Modeling

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(6)Elk KiverMilling Company Flour Mill (See Figures 5 and 6) A new Elk River Milling Company was incorporated in 1907 by a group of men from Massachusetts. The officers of the company were George E. Putnam as president and Charles H. Hartwell as secretary/treasurer. Putnam was director of the Middlesex Trust and Safe Deposit Company in Lowell, Mass. and Hartwell was the director of the Lawrence National Bank and trustee of the Lawrence Savings Bank in Lawrence, Mass. Members of the Milling Company board of directors included Henry K. Webster, Gilman Harnden, and George C. Jackman, all bankers and businessmen from Lawrence, Mass. M.L. Welch was appointed manager of the mill.73 The new flour mill was built by W.F. Chadbourne and completed in October 1907 at a cost of $40,000. It was sixty by sixty feet and four stories (fifty-six feet) high. The mills capacity was 350 barrels of flour per day and 50 barrels of rye flour per day. The following description of the mills machinery was published in the Sherburne County StarNewr. "On the first or main floor of the mill the grinding, packing, weighing and shipping will be done. Here also is the farmers' exchange, office, etc. The machinery consists of five double stands of 9 x 30 and three double stands 9 x 24 rolls for grinding wheat; two double stands 7 x 14 rolls for grinding rye; one 2-pair high 9 x 24 feed rolls; one 3-high roller mill for grinding screenings; three Silver Creek flour packers and one bran packer; Fairbanks' hopper scale, 100 bushels capacity, for weighing wheat from the cars as well as from teams. On the second floor are four double -sieve middlings purifiers; two No. 15 Perfection dust collectors; one shorts duster, one Prinz milling separator, tempering bins, packet bins, etc. On the third floor are located two 6 x 12 and one 4 x 17 center drive square sifters for bolting wheat flour; one 1 x 10 sifter for rye flour; four 20 x 18 differential reels; one receiving separator; two wheat scourers; one rye scourer. The fourth floor contains five dust collectors; one 50 foot conveyor for distributing wheat to the storage bins; also the heads of 45 elevators, which extend from the basement up through the various floors. The entire machinery equipment was furnished by the Nordyke and Marmon Company and is the most modern and complete ever built by this leading mill furnishing house.i74 This mill was also powered by the Elk River with one 48 inch Victor turbine that drove the flour mill and one 36 inch American turbine that drove the rye and feed machinery. In November 1907 a spur track was built from the main -railroad line to the flour mill. It separated from the main line between Proctor and Oxford Avenues and curled southwest to the flour mill (see section on spur track).75 In 1911 the mill was employing five people.' 29