Water Powered

Water Powered. rivers, streams, creeks and mills. , Mills and the Advancing Frontier , For centuries this region has been the homeland of the Dakota and Ojibwe people. The late 1700s brought French and British fur traders and, by the late 1800s, Euro-American settlement had pushed the tribes onto reservations. Lumber and agriculture became the major industries of what was now called Otter Tail County. Of these crops, wheat became king., The water power provided by the area's abundance of rivers, streams, and creeks soon turned Otter Tail County into a center of milling in the region. Waterwheels harnessed the water's flow, turning the millstones which ground grain into flour. As agriculture pushed ever westward, mills stood as a symbol of Euro-American industry., This wayside recognizes the Craigie Flour Mill, the first flour and grist mill in Otter Tail County, built near this spot by James Craigie. Farmers hauled wheat and other grains such as barley, oats, and rye, by wagon to the mill from as far as 40 miles away, often camping in nearby fields to await their turn at the mill., Captions: , The Craigie Flour Mill on Balmoral Creek. Source: Otter Tail County Historical Society , Right: James G. Craigie Source: Otter Tail County Historical Society, Grist Mills - Grinding Grain into Flour , Area farmers hauled their grains to the Craigie Flour Mill where it was ground into flour using millstones originally brought from Scotland. Millstones are flat stone disks mounted in pairs. The upper (runner) stone turns against the lower stone (bedstone)., Grain was poured from a hopper through a hole in the upper stone and crushed between the two. Patterned grooves or furrows in the stones guided the grain outward as it was ground, where it was collected., The first stage of milling produced a coarse meal, which, once cooled, was sifted to separate the bran and germ from the flour. White flour is made from the starchy part of the grain (the endosperm); whole-grain flour also contains bran and germ., Captions: , Millstone Patterns , Three Parts of a Wheat Berry , Bran: Tough outer layer containing fiber , Endosperm: Starchy; for fine flour , Germ: Contains vitamins and oils, James G. Craigie , Milling Pioneer, Described as "brawny and robust," Scottish immigrant James Craigie originally came to Otter Tail County in 1861 along with his wife, Margaret, and daughter, Annie. After an absence of several years related to the US-Dakota War of 1862, he returned and began work on his home and flour mill, the first in the county, on a site along the small creek that runs just to the right of this sign. He named his settlement 'Balmoral' after Balmoral Castle in Scotland. A dam was built across the creek, now known as Balmoral Creek, which provided enough power to run his flour and grist mill. The mill was completed in 1870., Craigie named his enterprise 'Snow Flake Flour' and, due to its convenient location for area farmers who previously had been hauling their grain to mills in Alexandria, the business was a great success., As memorialized on the bronze plaque on the stone marker at this site, tragedy struck the Craigie family on a beautiful day in September of 1872, when Mr. and Mrs. Craigie and a young woman visiting from Scotland were drowned in a sailing accident on Otter Tail Lake. Ownership of the mill, following a period of litigation, eventually fell to the Craigie's daughter, Annie. She and her husband ran the mill for several years before Annie's passing in 1879., The mill was razed in the 1930s. The water wheel now featured on the stone marker was salvaged from the mill before it was demolished. The millstones are reconstructed from pieces of the original stones., For more information about this and other Historic Roadside Properties throughout Minnesota, please visit: mndot.gov/roadsides/historic