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square blocks arranged along the river and Godfrey's dam. Streets were named for Godfrey's wife and daughter, as well as Elk, Merchants, Minnehaha and Hiawatha. si The core of Orono was the six-foot crib and boulder dam. Drawing power from the Elk River, the lumber mill used timber floated down the Mississippi in seasonal log drives. The sawmill was fitted with one sash saw capable of sawing about three thousand feet of lumber per day. Godfrey also opened a general store, as did P.C. Hawes. In addition to the mills and dam, Orono had a post office, a scattering of small frame houses, a cemetery, a schoolhouse built in 1857 that also served as the Sherburne County 'Courthouse, and the Trinity Episcopal Church.s2 By 1857, the population of the settlement reached about 134. Godfrey appears to have been in partnership in the lumber mill with Charles Mansur, an Orono resident who left Minnesota about 1862. s3 Godfrey also sold an interest to Ed Dickey in 1857. By 1880, the property was sold to E.P. Mills and W: H. Houlton, whose lumber business would produce 1,200,000 board feet of lumber by 1880~ Ard Godfrey (1813-?) was born at Orono, Maine and grew up in a family of millwrights. In 1847 he arrived in St. Anthony to work as a millwright for Franklin Steele who was planning the first dam at the falls. (The house Godfrey built in St. Anthony in 1849 still stands.) Throughout his career, Godfrey sought opportunities to develop mill sites and left St. Anthony to briefly return to Maine. At his return he purchased the Orono millsite, made a townsite plan in 1855, and an addition in 1857. However, he does not appear to have permanently resided in Orono, and well before he sold his last mill property about 1863 he devoted himself to his interests in Minneapolis, including his saw mill and grist mill on Minnehaha Creek. s4 Pushing westward, he later built the first sawmill in Montana. ss Godfrey's partner, John G. Jameson, was also a native of Maine. He arrived in Minnesota in 1851. Unlike Godfrey, after the sale of the mill property, he entered farming, which he pursued until his death in 1869.~° By 1899, there were two general stores and a wagon shop still in operation near the dam, in addition to the Elk River Milling Company's flour mill and the W. H. Houlton Lumber Company's sawmill. While Godfrey established the dam and early mills, it was W. H. Houlton's flour and lumber businesses that would persist at this location for several generations, s~ Elk River: "Lowertown' The arrival of the railroad encouraged growth downriver on the Mississippi in what was known as Lowertown. The new town site of Elk River was platted in 1865, then replatted in 1868, and incorporated in 1880-817 The original plat was made by O.E. Garrison for J. Q. A Nickerson. The incorporation included the townsite of Orono. Interest in the Mississippi and The mill village in Orono in 1879. From tlw View of Elk River, Sherburne County (1879). Published ~t J. J. Stoner, Madison, Wisconsin. Godfrey' s saw mill was on the south bank of the river and the flour mill was on the north bank. Elk River Historic Contexts and Phase II Downtown Commercial Area Study 26