First Flour Mill in Dakota

The river that turned this mill could also wreck one. When the ice broke on the Big Sioux at Sioux Falls on March 20, 1881, the water rose about sixteen feet in a day, the highest yet known there, and Webber, Shaw and Watson lost their lower flour mill entirely. The mill at Dell Rapids was seriously damaged. Downstream through Lincoln County nearly all the grist mills along the river were wrecked and every bridge was carried away, and valley farmers were driven to the highlands with heavy losses.

What the plaque says

First Flour Mill in Dakota on Sioux 5 miles NE Dakota's first flour mill was established in 1867, after the Legislature gave them a water right on the Big Sioux five miles northeast, by Preston Hotchkiss & Amos Dexter on Lot 3, Section 32, Township 91, Range 48. They sold to Crill & Sargent in 1869. Called the Portland mill, it operated until 1887. It was just below the bridge. Erected 1966 by Farmer's Elevator Co. and State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ponca State Park — 7.5 mi
  Oak ravines and bluffs at the downstream end of the Missouri's last unchannelized reach in Nebraska, with a three-state overlook and the river's resource and education center.
• National Music Museum — 22 mi
  One of the great collections of musical instruments in the world, on a college campus in a prairie town, built around a band teacher's thousands of horns, fiddles and curiosities.
• Spirit Mound Historic Prairie — 27 mi
  A lone hill north of Vermillion that Lewis and Clark walked to on a scorching day in 1804, now one of the few places left where you can stand exactly where they stood.

More markers nearby

• St. Peter's Church Jefferson — steps away
• Grasshopper Cross — steps away
• Postmasters Jefferson — steps away
• Twelve Mile House — 0.5 mi