Flour and Grain Mill Still Grinding: Missouri's Historic Dillard Mill

Enlarge Image Image Gallery A Barnard Roller Mill, located on the mill's first floor. Jason Baird

The gristmill, once an integral part of every rural community, is a thing of the past.

But the past remains alive in southeast Missouri, where the Dillard Mill continues to churn along much as it has for decades.

Rick Brown is the water-powered gristmill’s caretaker and operator. He’s quick to admit that he took the position with no background or experience in mill operation. It would be a daunting task for many, but not for Rick.

“Well, the first time I ever went up in an airplane,” he said, “I jumped out of it.”

In other words, Rick, who once served in the Army’s Special Forces, dives right into challenges. The mill has responded to his style: The hundred-year-old equipment there hums along just as it did in 1957 during its last official working days.

Its history, though, goes back to the mid-1800s.

The road to becoming a historic site

The first mill on the site, Wisdom’s Mill, was built in the 1850s. The small community of Dillard grew up around the mill. That mill was destroyed by fire in 1897.

Three years later, two Polish immigrants, brother and sister Emil and Mary Mischke, began building a new mill at the site, using timbers salvaged from Wisdom’s Mill. The Mischkes modernized the mill, installing steel roller mills instead of burrstones for grinding. They also installed a 23-inch Samson vertical water turbine (built by Leffel Turbine Mfg., Springfield, Ohio) to power the mill, pump water and, later, to generate electricity.

The mill re-opened as Dillard Mill in 1908. The turbine operated the mill using an 8-foot head of water. At full power, the turbine produced 24.2 hp, used 1,974 gallons of water per minute and turned at 200 rpm on the main shaft.

By 1917 the mill was a roaring success. When farmers brought their grain in to be milled, they also purchased goods at the local general store. After Mary sold her portion to Emil, he ran the business for 10 years without a partner. He must have been lonely, because at the age of 66 he did what a bachelor out in the sticks might do to find a wife – he sent for a mail order bride from California.

Mrs. Mischke, however, was not enthralled with the Ozarks and the gristmill. After a few years she convinced her husband to take her back to California, and in 1930 Emil sold the mill to Lester E. Klemme. Klemme continued milling flour and livestock feed, and also built cabins on the site and opened a resort called Old Mill Lodge. For $7, a person could swim or fish in the pond, stay overnight in a cabin and eat with Klemme in his home.

By the middle of the century, though, industrialization was closing gristmills throughout the country. Klemme shut down the milling side of his business, but kept the resort open until the 1960s. In 1974, he sold the mill to the not-for-profit L-A-D Foundation in St. Louis. In 1975 the foundation leased the mill (plus 132 acres) to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. Today, it is listed as a state historic site.