Posts from the ‘Mill Top to Bottom’ Category

The summer we purchased the Mill, 2005, my son Michael discovered a secret of the Mill- the ladder to the third and a half floor. Located above the Emco Mills sign is an area that lets you look down on the grain bins. Some of these are the third floor grain bins but it also gives access to the two grain bins that extend all the way to the basement 36 feet below.

This is a long shot of Texas showing the staircase in the foreground and our sitting area to the right. We always thought this would make a great artists studio as long as the artist liked to climb stairs. We kept a museum of signs here. At the bottom right is a Raddison Canoe sign from the Mill. There are also signs from the many restaurants that started at the Mill including Sit-n-Bull and The Complete Burger. There is a sign for the Silver Fox Inn and for Perq Systems.The view from the fourth floor was spectacular. We had a camera in Texas sending pictures to Flicker. There are over a million pictures there of the I80 bridge at all times of the day and weather. This is one of the last photos taken, about noon, the day the Mill burned. To see more go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/emlentonmill

The Emlenton Mill shooting star is hung from just below the fourth floor window facing the river. Above that window is a very old pulley that was used for raising things to the upper levels of the Mill. The star is made from eight foot aluminum channels that were part of a roller rack donated by Whitaker Corporation. It is covered with white and blue LED christmas lights. At night it appears to hang in space.

The fourth floor of the Mill housed the flywheel for the main grain elevators. The chain drive is shown below. It also housed four cyclones, in a room overlooking the river, which were used to separate the grain and two shaker screen units which were also used to separate the grain. You could still turn the flywheel and watch the chain turn the elevator although the elevator was no longer continuous.

The fourth floor of the Mill has a sign that says “You made it to Texas”. We don’t know why but the story is that it was hot there too. It’s also true that the oil fields moved from Pennsylvania to Texas. The big flywheel was originally driven by belts from the basement and later by an electric motor in Texas. It in turn drives a chain that drives the grain elevators. The small selector pictured shows how the larger one on the fifth floor works. The turn wheel on the first floor turns the selector in Texas and selects the chute. There are many of these smaller selectors all over the mill.

One of the first things the Mill needed was a new roof. Joe Hanna, his sons and other helpers worked diligently through the Fall of 2008 to put a new roof and siding on the fourth and fifth floors of the Mill. We used pink board to insulate the roof and then added metal. The new windows were hoisted by hand.