March 21, 2016
For today’s Milling Monday post, we’ve pulled an inventory from our Archives. Labeled the Pillsbury-Washburn Flour Mills Company inventory of Palisade Mill, March 1893, the book is filled with page after page of data. It is a snapshot of one month in history, a glimpse into the operations of a mill, a company, and a city and county that owed much to the rise of the Minnesota flour industry.
The Palisade Mill was built in 1872 by the Leonard Day Company, and was later purchased and expanded by the Washburn-Crosby Company. It was a Pillsbury property at the time of its closing and dismantling in 1932; eight years later, in 1940, the final remnants of the closed mill were destroyed in a fire.
The Palisade Mill may be long gone, but photographs, documents, and other materials from this and the other mills that played such an important role in local history remain at Hennepin History Museum and other local repositories such as the Mill City Museum and Hennepin County Library’s Special Collections.
To access this or other archival materials from Hennepin History Museum’s archival collection, please contact our archivist, Susan Larson-Fleming. Our reading room is open to the public five days per week, and with advance notice we can have your research materials awaiting your arrival.
