Agriculture, Water Power, and Transportation

Agriculture, Water Power, and Transportation. . Lower Town founder Anson Brown erected the first mill on Broadway in 1832 where Sinclair's mill was later located (labeled above). As shown in this 1870s photo of Lower Town and the Huron River from the hill above Plank Road (North Main Street today), Brown dammed the Huron River upstream to create a mill pond and raise the level of the water, which flowed down a millrace high above the river's north bank. This provided power for a flour mill, a woolen mill, a paper mill, and later industries., Agriculture fueled the early economy of Lower Town. After 1839, when the railroad reached Ann Arbor from Detroit, paper, wool, flour, and feed from the mills, as well as livestock held in pens in the foreground, could be shipped to eastern markets. The economic survival of Lower Town was assured-though it would not be the center of town as Anson Brown had hoped., After Anson Brown’s death in 1834, his widow Desire and his business partner Edward L. Fuller were eager to sell all their interests in Lower Town properties. The economic panic of 1837 seriously affected real estate values in Michigan. In 1839 William Sinclair purchased Anson Brown's mill, repairing it and installing new machinery. Sinclair's first mill was reported to have ground 800 barrels of flour weekly. After the 1841 harvest, he shipped 8,112 barrels of flour to New York via the Erie Canal, a record for Ann Arbor up to that time. It became the most important mill in Ann Arbor history., When Sinclair's mill was destroyed by a fire in 1860, he quickly built the one pictured above and was back in business the next season. The mill changed owners several times, and in 1892 it became part of a conglomerate. The Ann Arbor Milling Company bought it, along with several other mills in the area, and renamed it Argo., In 1903, the owners built a new dam and improved the mill, but fire claimed it again in 1904-for the last time. With the development of cheaper steam power, water-powered mills were increasingly unable to compete. The dam and mill were sold in 1905 to the Eastern Michigan Edison company (Detroit Edison, later DTE), which was buying up all the water power along the river to generate electricity. Edison built a generating station on the site. After it no longer produced power, it became a transmission substation.