Franklin County, Nebraska

For Another Day

We took an afternoon vacation to the Champion Mill near Imperial this past Sunday on what seemed like the hottest day in July. It is the last functional water-powered mill in Nebraska, and I thought readers might like to have it described and learn a little bit of its flour and grist mill history.

The Champion Mill stands in the little town of Champion, first called Hamilton, on the Frenchman river in Chase County. In 1887, when bidding for the county seat was going on, the residents of the town of Hamilton changed its name to Champion to honor Nebraska’s first attorney general Champion S. Chase. Imperial won the county seat, but the town remained Champion.

Thomas Scott completed construction of the mill in 1888. The name of the mill was Champion Roller Mills Company. Scott used steel rollers from its start instead of the stone burrs common in milling at that time giving his mill an edge in an evolving industry by offering better quality flour. This mill was destroyed by fire early in 1892, along with some ice skates and coats of children who used the millpond. Scott rebuilt the mill but sold it the next year to R. P. ‘Dick’ James.

The 1892 mill was a two story 25’ by 32’ building with a stone foundation and was equipped with more sophisticated machinery than earlier mills. James operated it until 1897, when he traded it to Thomas T. Jordan for a farm near Minden who owned a mill in Wilcox. He made some improvements to the mill. In 1899, the mill started making a new brand of flour, the “Home Flour.”

From 1908, when it changed hands, the mill went through three different owners and a number of changes up to 1929: an electric arc bleaching system, additions of an office, storeroom third-story auger house, covered drive, and an outside scale with a 85 bushel dump pit.

In 1929 Glen Knotwell bought the mill and changed the name to Lakeside Roller Mills. He made many changes to be more competitive. The dam was rebuilt with a concrete spillway and many other changes like a new turbine and turbine house on the west side. This turbine is still functional.

A new sifter allowed them to produce two grades of flour, which they called “Valley Pride” (grade 1) and “Prairie Rose” (grade 2). They produced pancake flour and cornmeal.

Flour milling at Champion was discontinued during World War II because of labor shortage, but the mill still milled and mixed feed. Knotwell died in 1953, but his widow continued in the feed and grain business till 1956, when she sold the mill to Carl Hill. He cracked and mixed grain here till 1968, when he retired.

The next year, the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission bought the mill to preserve it as a state historical park as an example of late 19th and early 20th century industrial milling. This was Nebraska’s last mill with a functional water turbine and break rollers. Although never a large mill, when compared to other merchant mills that shipped flour throughout the state, country and even overseas. Most of these kinds of mills are either gone, in ruins or were gutted buildings. The flour rollers were removed in 1940’s but the cracking rollers; storage and mixing equipment are still functional. The old millpond still holds water and provides waterpower and a recreation opportunity, just as it has since 1887.

Millponds have always provided recreation. At Champion Lake in the 1920’s there was a diving board, and a bathhouse where swimmers could rent a suit for a dime. A few canoes and rowboats could be rented and eventually motorboat rides could be had for 25 cents. At that time, the county road still crossed the Frenchman River over the dam so the pond was accessible to everyone. An icehouse, south of the dam, supplied summer ice for cool drinks, under the trees, planted around 1900 by Tom Jordan’s son, Roy. Today the Game and Parks own most of the shoreline of the millpond. Fee camping is allowed. A valid Park Entry Permit is required to use the park. Champion is located on highway S-15A seven miles southwest of Imperial.

As we drove up to the mill, I hurried from the car. “Ah, there’s the old scales,” I said, and knew I was in for a historical experience. The planks looked old and worn by the wheels of many wagons. Entering the office I saw old photos from the past. I couldn’t pay my entry fee fast enough. I spent far longer than most people do looking at the pictures and trying to get a mental image of the mill. There were pictures of the original one that burned in 1892. It sat more over by the lake running the opposite direction of the mill today. It’s not often a person can see pictures of a hundred years ago and still recognize the object. In this case, it’s plain to see the mill in the old pictures has the same look today.

The next door leads to the dump station with doors on both ends. In the photo, there is an open door with an old vehicle leaving his wheat or corn to be ground.

From that room, the guide took us to the original building full of the rollers and other machinery. The turbine was in a room adjoining the roller and grinding room in a hole in the floor.

In this original first-story room, a person could look at the wood and know is had seen many years of use, for old timbers take on a reddish-orange look. It was made strong with heavy 2 x 10’s and 12’s and middle supporting timbers were many of the same boards at least four or five thick. Up the stairs we went to the next level and up one more set of stairs to the storage bins that held the different grains, with homemade wooden chutes to move the grain where they wanted it to go, up in the rafters hung other wheels and belts. I was awed at the wooden chutes going this way and that way, all made out of 1x4 inch or 6 inch wooden boards or what ever size they needed to supply the need. They even made them curve and some had little doors on them for viewing and cleaning.

There was a good view out the third story window where a person could look out over the millpond and see the spillway and hear its fall of water. For a minute, I thought I saw the ghosts of those people still sitting on its surface. From the other window was the view of the Frenchman River as it flowed away downstream from the millpond.

I asked the lady guide if they still grind at the mill. “Yes” she said, “We grind once in the spring and package little bags of flour to sell to the tourists.” She went on to say the wheels will again turn sometime in the next week, for the mill has run out of flour. “We have a maintenance man who knows how to start and run the mill. Fifty pounds is all we will grind.” Only a 100 pounds were ground in 1999-and that from a mill that had produced 1000’s of pounds of flour and feed for all of Chase County and surrounding areas for over a hundred years.

That seems sad to me. But I am so happy that this Champion Mill did not go the route of most of the other mills of the state. I am glad it is a state park for all to see and observe how a mill used to work, i.e.: from the tools, still hanging on the wall, that helped fix the broken parts; to its worn steps that lead to the third floor; this old building, if it could talk, would be full of memories on the inside, while outside it now sports a new coat of white paint.

In 1969, when Carl Hill retired, it would have been so easy for the weathered building to be demolished. But, for a person like me that realizes it worth to present and future generations, I’m glad they didn’t tear it down.

Next week’s article will be about Sherwood Mill of Franklin County.

And the mill and I are gray. But both, till we fall into ruin and wreck, To our fortune of toil are bound; And the man goes and the stream flows, And the wheel moves slowly round. Thomas Dunn English

Rena Donovan, For Another Day.

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