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April 3,2000
New Ulm's old millsIt is always fascinating to look into relics of the past, to try to recapture images fading in a community's collective memory, to reconstruct in one's mind lifestyles slowly obliterated by economic transformation. Leafing through aging newspaper clippings, crumbling old documents and sharp-focused black-and-white photos at the Brown County museum last week, I was intrigued by a picture of this city that we barely associate with its present day. From the old records emerged a bustling farm town thriving on the manufacture of flour and cereals- surprising as it may sound to its younger residents, a milling center of national importance- whose wealthy and powerful lived in mansions overlooking the Minnesota River valley dotted by the impressive structures of their mills. "Throughout much of its history, the manufacture of flour and cereal products was New Ulm's principal industry," writes Daniel Hoisington, author of a 1998 study entitled "New Ulm's Historic Contexts." Wheat was the primary crop in Brown County, he notes. In 1877 there were 14,000 acres of wheat in the county. By 1888 there were 44,000. Between 1854 and WWI, 22 mills operated in the county. For several decades, Brown County trailed only Buffalo, N.Y. and Minneapolis in flour milling volume. In Minnesota, New Ulm ranked second only to Minneapolis in flour production. At their peak of operations, two plants, the Eagle Roller Mill and the New Ulm Roller Mill had a combined capacity of 7,000 barrels of flour daily. Mills lost their clout, as the economy changed. Corn displaced wheat in the surrounding fields after 1920, giving an economic advantage to mills closer to the harvests in the Great Plains states. The Eagle Roller Mill lasted until 1989 because it was converted to a rye flour mill. "The rushing sound of falling water, the creaking and groaning of wheels and gears, the pleasant smell of crushed wheat - all these sensations are associated with the romantic recollections of 'water-wheel' mills," wrote another researcher, Paul Klammer, in a 1958 study on "Brown County's Heritage". "Mills were a very important part of the economy in pioneer days; so much, that communities rose and disappeared as the mill prospered or failed. The area around New Ulm was no exception." Mills were powered by wind, water or steam; sometimes combinations, Klammer writes. They ground grain, sawed lumber, helped weave blankets and occasionally did other tasks. Most of the early water mills were powered by overshot wheels - thus it became imperative to have a stream of water in a ravine or area where a fairly high dam could be constructed. The dam would form a millpond, from which water was led by a waterway or mill run, often of earth lined with planks. Sometimes this was several hundred yards long in order to achieve the necessary height of fall. When the mill was not in use, the machinery was disconnected, the water turned off at the dam and the pond allowed to fill with water. The extra flow would be carried away by gravity over a wood or concrete spillway. The dam was constructed of clay, earth, stones or planks. In what may be the most exhaustive, consistent account of local mills, A. F. Anglemeyer, an official of the Eagle Roller Mill, in 1931 described the operation of a wind mill across from the Union Hospital (now site of Firle Funeral Home) -one of four in New Ulm in the early 1860s. "The immense wooden wheel upon which the mill was swung was a piece of especially good work. It was cogged on one side and placed in a horizontal position. It was turned by means of windlass and only the upper portion of the mill was swung to point the mill to the wind. The mill wheel had four huge flails, upon the frames of which were fastened the canvasses to catch the wind... The long flails barely cleared the ground and some of the more daring boys of the neighborhood found it exciting sport to lie on the ground beneath them and enjoy the cooling breeze that they made as the mill wheel turned." First steps Anglemeyer vividly describes the construction in 1855 of Brown County's first flour mill. Built at the site of the future Cottonwood Roller Mill, it never turned a wheel. "It was to have been a water-driven mill, and a dam was constructed across the Cottonwood, which in the summer of that year was a mere stream," Anglemeyer writes. "As the settlers worked, they were watched by a group of curious onlookers, composed by partly friendly, partly resentful Indians, who had not learned, so soon, the white man's language... The winter passed on and then came the spring of 1856 and with it the rains and the breaking up of the ice. The little stream turned into a raging torrent and soon became a treacherous river at flood time. The uncompleted mill and its frail dam were swept away, as was the first mill builder in Brown County, for (builder) Christian Adams lost his life while trying to save his plant from destruction." Globe Mill The first ambitious local mill, the Globe Mill, was built in 1857 on the southeast corner of Front and Third South, according to Anglemeyer. It was a "three and a half story solid timber frame building, 40 feet by 60 feet long, containing a complete grinding mill of two sets of mill stones, cleaning machinery, corn sheller, etc.; also a saw mill with circular saw, lathing machine, turner's lathe and crosscut saw." In its first year, the mill produced 101 bushels of wheat, 360 bushels of corn and 76 bushels of buckwheat. The city's early newspaper, the New Ulm Pioneer, reported that it drew customers from 90 miles away. The mill burned in the Dakota Conflict. Following the destruction of the Globe Mill, the New Ulm Mill Co. was organized in 1864. According to the New Ulm Post, this mill was a three-story structure, 60 by 70 feet, and equipped for both sawing and milling. It ground rye, cornmeal and feed. Anglemeyer tells a curious story related to this mill: "John Bellm, who was a member of the company, was also, it seems, a practical miller in charge of the plant. At times the work would require that he take the night shift in the engine room. It meant many long and tedious hours for Bellm, but it meant also many anxious moments for the people up town. Often times at odd hours of the night, they would be startled from their slumbers by the shrill fire alarm whistle from Bellm's mill, only to find to their anger that the alarm was nothing more than a miller's joke on his less industrious neighbors." After the mill burned again in 1873 a new mill was completed on Center Street, known as the New Ulm City Mill Co. With the addition of new investors from Chicago and St. Paul in 1882, the company became the New Ulm Roller Mill Co. Empire Roller Mill The Empire Roller Mill was built in 1880 near the railroad tracks on First South Street. At the time it was the largest and best equipped local mill. The plant consisted of a main building, a frame structure, warehouse, engine room and cooper shop. The roller process was employed from the start and the capacity was from 150 to 175 barrels of flour daily. The Empire Roller Mill merged with the New Ulm City Mill Co. in 1895. A fire destroyed the mill in 1910 and it was replaced with a brick building. Eagle Roller Mill Perhaps the best known of New Ulm's mills, a structure still standing as the only memory of the industry's turn of the century boom, the Eagle Roller Mill was started in 1856 as a saw and grist mill. After two fires and changes in ownership a new company acquired it in 1865 and expanded its capacity the following year to permit the grinding of flour. A widening market helped build an addition and modernize the plant again in 1881. New steel rollers replaced the old milling stones, increasing capacity to 200 barrels a day. The mill was driven by an 85-horse-power steam engine. As a result of another ownership change in 1886, by 1891 the structure had been expanded to four stories, with a capacity of 1,500 barrels a day. By 1906, the Eagle Roller Mill manufactured 5,000 barrels of flour daily- or 891,684 barrels of flour and 62,463,330 pounds of feed a year. In that single year, the mill's total business was $4,000,894. In 1911 a rye flour and cornmeal was added, yielding a capacity of 6,000 barrels a day. The mill was said to be the largest country mill in the world. The Eagle Roller Mill employed 350 people and maintained 51 elevators. Its brand names, Gold Coin and Daniel Webster, were known throughout the Midwest. "Today the Eagle Roller Mill company has the largest rye mill in the United States and the local plant ranks thirteenth in the milling industry of the nation," production manager Charles Veeck said in 1949. The Eagle Roller Mill was bought by the International Milling Company in 1951. Wheat production was halted within a few years, but the mill continued to mill rye flour until 1989.
Cottonwood Roller Mill The Cottonwood Roller Mill was erected in 1879. Although it began as a water-powered mill, it was converted to steam by 1882. Its capacity was modest, up to 75 barrels of "Bentzin's Best" flour a day. The mill closed in 1921. Lamented The Journal in 1935: "New Ulm is about to lose another of its interesting historic landmarks- the old waterpower mill on the Big Cottonwood River which for many years did a thriving business, grinding flour and feed for the farmers and furnishing flour to the residents here..."
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