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Flour Mill <br />The flour mill is one of the institutions Elk River is proud of and it is gratifying to know that it is <br />doing a profitable business. <br />Sherburne County Star, December 16,1897. <br />Godfrey's flour mill in Uppertown burned in 1868, and Mills and Houlton rebuilt it as a <br />three-story frame flour mill with a two hundred barrel per -day capacity. The Elk River <br />Milling Company, with W.H. Houlton, Henry Castle, and W.G. Babcock as officers, <br />produced a high grade of flour sold to Eastern and European markets. 62 The mill burned <br />in 1902. The property was sold, and in 1907, a new four story, 300-barrell per day mill <br />was erected by John Hill and Charles Hartwell of Massachusetts. During the May 1912 <br />flood, the new flour mill was undermined, along with the dam and bridge. The <br />Massachusetts buyers had failed to pay the mortgage and were foreclosed in the same <br />month that the dam broke, returning ownership to Elk River interests. 63 (Timeline book: <br />1919 new flour mill?). A cooper shop manufactured barrels for the flour mill. <br />Starch Factories <br />Starch factories manufactured potato starch and provided Elk River area farmers with <br />another market for their produce. A factory was opened in 1890 by T.S. Nickerson, and <br />another in 1910 by C.H. Caley. About 1914 a factory was founded to manufacture boxes <br />for market crops. <br />Graves and Bailey Grain Elevator, Highway 10. Photo 2002. <br />Grain Elevators <br />The Graves and Bailey Grain Elevator was constructed in 1922 on the Jefferson Highway <br />opposite Oak Street. It replaced O.J. Whitman's feed mill on the same site. Adjacent to <br />potato and coal warehouses and the Northern Pacific Freight House, it appears to be the <br />structure at this location today. Another elevator owned by the Elk River Milling <br />Company was located across the tracks to the north. <br />Elk River Historic Contexts Study Draft 4/2002 <br />26 <br />1i <br />