Cascade Mill

Cascade Mill. . As the lesser known of the original mills built in early Sioux Falls along the banks of the Big Sioux River, the Cascade Mill was built slightly before its bigger, more expensive, grandiose neighbor at the falls - The Queen Bee Mill. At half the size and nearly one sixth the cost, the Cascade Mill was built upstream from the Falls on the east side of the river just north of 8th Street, in the location of the hotel today. Built in 1877, the Cascade Mill and dam were constructed of native quartzite stone, anchored at the base to the existing bedrock. Due to this construction, the Cascade Mill was considered to be one of the strongest of its times. The dam and mill survived early floods that took out most of the structures along the river in the rest of downtown., The Cascade Milling Company furnished the building with newest of milling equipment from Dubuque, Iowa, and began producing flour in the fall of 1878. Railroad tracks connected the adjacent elevator to Milwaukee, Chicago, and St. Paul – supplying both to local residents and to customers as far as the east coast., With quartzite building materials readily available for quarrying on site, and a location adjacent to the falls, the mills embodied the dreams of entrepreneurship and progress that early Sioux Falls aspired to embody. Although both the lack of grain supply and inadequate river flow have been rumored to have deteriorated the mills' success, the early milling industry and associated development set the foundation for industrial business in downtown Sioux Falls.