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| Lowry's Best - 100 lb flour sack |
From the Glenwood Herald 1917:
One of the busiest business institutions of the village is the Lowry Roller Mills. During a large part of the year they work both day and night shifts. Their flour and other products find a ready market throughout this section of the state. The mill is owned by Misensol and Leslie, two of Lowry's most substantial and progressive business men. [Editor note: The mill was originally established by Martin Bartos about 1900]
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| Lowry Roller Mill at the north end of Main Street (Pope County Historical photo) |
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| 1912 ad from The American Miller |
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| Looking south (Pope County Historical photo) |
Perhaps the biggest fire in the history of Lowry occurred Feb. 27, 1937, when the well-known Lowry Roller Mills burned to the ground
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| 1937 ashes with lumber yard and elevator in the background (author's collection) |
".. That certainly was a tough break that the mill burned. I’d like to be home and see the wreckage." [find more insightful comments in 'The Oliver Letters' post]
The mill burned to the ground in 1937 (well before my time by the way). Flour mills with their floating mist of explosive flour dust are notorious fire hazards. In 1878, Minneapolis' "Washburn A Mill", the largest flour mill in the world at the time, spectacularly exploded, the flour dust ignited by a spark from grinding millstones. This triggered a series of explosions causing the death of 18 workers. (see mnopedia article)
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| Mill City Museum home page |
Minneapolis' "Mill City Museum", which opened in 2003, incorporates the ruins of the A Mill. It is right next to the Guthrie Theater. Worth a visit.
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| Lowry Mill interior (Minnesota History Center photo) |
It is highly likely that a flour dust explosion, though on a smaller scale, happened that winter day at the Lowry Roller Mill. The mill was not rebuilt. I've wondered why, but this happened during the depths of the Great Depression, so perhaps it is not so surprising.
Mill Fire Memories
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| Lowry Depot [author's collection] |
The Lowry Roller Mills was a regionally famous institution during the early part of the 20th century. I don't know when it was built, perhaps before the turn of the century, but it was a formidable, white, wood frame structure, located in the northern part of town, not far from the railroad depot.
The mill was about 50 feet high and counting lean-tos and outbuildings, it must have covered nearly an acre of ground. It housed unbelievable machinery; shafts, pulleys, belts, flywheels, grain sifters, elevating buckets and whatnot, all driven by a master diesel engine. More than once that engine scared the devil out of me when it backfired during its start-up process. Diesels were hard to start in those days and a backfire, followed by a huge cloud of smoke, could be heard and seen from all around the town.
I recall that the floors of the mill were polished smooth, no doubt from the friction of the countless, heavy bags of grain that were dragged over them year after year.
Lowry Roller Mills brought choice, locally-grown wheat and refined it into excellent flour that became widely renowned for its quality. The flour was shipped by rail to many far-flung distribution centers and was trucked by the mill's big "White" truck to regional areas in central Minnesota. I am told that the Glenwood Bakery used 30 sacks of white, Lowry Roller Mills four every day during the 1920s.
The "Mill Truck" with its green-painted, wooden box was garaged overnight in a lean-to on the north side of the mill. The truck was always backed into the garage. I suppose the truck being so long for its day, it would create a traffic hazard if it were backed out of the garage into the Main street of Lowry. Strange though, I don't recall any fast and heavy traffic on Lowry's pot-holed, graveled, main street, vintage 1937. More than likely, backing the truck into the garage posed a challenge to the driver that could not be resisted or was it done so that a quick get-away would be possible in case of fire?
The mill directly supported four prominent families in Lowry and provided a market for thousands of bushels of red wheat grown in the nearby area. Double-boxes of wheat, pulled by teams of horses, were often seen lined up at the mill, waiting to be off-loaded.
Someone returning to Lowry after attending, perhaps a dance, at Kensington on a cold Friday night in Feb. 1937, noted a fire in the lower reaches of the mill. He sounded the fire alarm and the Lowry volunteer fire fighters responded, but by that time the fire had jumped to the upper part of the structure. The water tower and modern fire-fighting equipment were still just a gleam in the eye of the village council then and the old town hall fire pumper wouldn't throw a great volume of water 50 feet height.
An emergency call for help was rushed to the Glenwood fire fighters but when they arrived the fire was out of control (new highway 55 was not completed at that time). Fortunately, the wind that night was light -- northwest about 10 miles per hour. It was strong enough, though, to carry flaming embers, generated by the fire and hurled aloft by the vicious thermal currents, more than one-half mile.
The whole town was quickly aroused to the specter. The mill was a goner, that was sure, but could any of the nearby wood structures be saved? Two restaurants across main street from the mill were in peril and no hope was held for a 4-plex apartment house just 100 feet downwind. The families living within quickly moved all their possessions outside.
The two fire-fighting groups, united under the direction of the Glenwood fire chief, knowing that the mill was lost, re-directed their efforts toward saving nearby structures. Unbelievable! They were 100 per cent successful in that effort. Except for the mill and its adjacent machine shop, no other structure was lost. A fire did start in the basement of Kasper's store nearby but Bob Kasper was alert to the possible danger and quickly extinguished the fire.
I was nearly 10 years old when this event took place The railroad depot, where we lived, was upwind so it was not threatened. we, (my mother, my younger sisters and I), watched the fire in awe from our kitchen window. Two of my older brothers were busy, stationed on downwind roofs, throwing off burning embers carried there by the wind. My oldest brother faced real trouble. His wood-framed restaurant (and combined apartment home) was just across the main street from the mill. He claimed that water, sprayed onto his building from the fire hoses, sizzled because the sheet metal facing of the building was so hot, and candy bars in the showcase near the front of the building melted from the heat of the fire. The plate glass windows on the front of his restaurant were cracked by the heat. Had my brother's restaurant burned, without doubt, the adjacent post office, meat market and hardware store would have followed. I don't remember what happened to the old "Mill Truck."
Roy Robieson
Copyright © 2017 Dave Hoplin
