EDINA MILLS SITE

The Edina Mills site, West 50th Street at Browndale Avenue, is owned by the City of Edina and was added to the City’s initial heritage preservation zoning district by Ordinance No. 811-A107 in 1977. A National Register of Historic Places nomination form was prepared by Foster Dunwiddie in the late 1970s, but was never submitted to the state review committee. The site has been assigned site inventory number 21HE0245 by the Office of the State Archaeologist.

DESCRIPTION
The Edina Mills Archaeological Site is located on Minnehaha Creek in Dwight Williams Park, a unit of the City park system. The only extant surface structure associated with the historic mill is the mill dam, which is located underneath the Browndale Bridge. This structure is a concrete gravity spillway with an uncontrolled crest approximately 24 feet in length. The abutment walls blend into the stream banks, which are high and have steep slopes. The raceway or flume from the Mill Pond, now filled in, runs for a distance of approximately 34 feet underneath the embankment formed by Browndale Road; the intake is buried under several feet of alluvium, fill, and riprap. A considerable amount of silt and debris has accumulated in front of the upstream face of the mill dam; below the spillway, a large scatter of rocks and boulders line the stilling basin. The creek bed and banks are mostly gravel and coarse sand, which scours easily. Several times over its history the mill and associated structures were damaged by floodwaters: owing to repeated fillings to prevent bank erosion, the creek bed is largely covered with boulders and large pieces of broken stone, and both banks have been armored with riprap.

The archaeological remains of the mill house are located on the left bank (descending) of the creek. The mill was a large timber and masonry structure measuring approximately 40 by 36 feet. The concrete piers and floors, as well as some timber framing members and foundation stones, lie buried under several feet of fill. The turbine pit was filled with mud, sand, and rubble when the site was excavated in 1977. After the archaeological work was completed, the city developed a small interpretation facility on the site, consisting of an information kiosk, a preserved millstone, and an outline of the millhouse walls marked with square wooden posts.

ISSUES AND ANALYSIS
The importance of the Minnehaha Creek waterpower resource in early Edina history can hardly be over-estimated. When the area was first settled in the mid-nineteenth century, the creek was seen as an inexhaustible power source that could be harnessed to a wide range of industrial uses. Even after steam engines rendered waterwheels obsolete, the motive power of falling water continued to be an important economic resource.

The site was originally part of a quarter-section tract claimed by William Hoyt in 1855. The following year, Hoyt sold his interest in the property to a group of speculators, who included the waterpower development in their plans to develop a townsite called Waterville. The “paper town” of Waterville did not survive the Panic of 1857, but the Waterville Mill (built by local carpenter William Marriott) was an active grist mill when William Rheem and Jonathan T. Grimes acquired the property in 1859. In 1867 the mill passed into the ownership of Daniel H. Buckwalter, who in turn sold the waterpower privilege to Andrew Craik in 1869. Craik and his sons made many improvements to the mill, which they named the Edina Mill, and processed wheat, corn, rye, oats, and barley for the “home” (i.e., local) market. Craik hired George Millam, a fellow Scotsman, to manage the mill, and in 1875 Millam purchased the waterpower from Craik. In 1889, Millam sold the mill to Henry F. Brown, the Minneapolis lumberman who established a large stock farm at Edina. The Edina Mill formed part of the Browndale Farm estate that was purchased by Thorpe Bros. Realty in 1922 for the Country Club development.

There are numerous historical photographs and contemporary written descriptions of the Edina Mills complex. The first mill dam appears to have been a relatively crude timber and stone overflow structure designed to be overtopped by the creek. The Craik mill dam was a more elegant stone spillway that redirected part of the creek’s flow into an open millrace or flume that directed the falling water against the paddles of a large, overshot waterwheel, which created the mechanical power that caused three run of burr stones to grind the grain. George Millam reportedly replaced the old overshot waterwheel with three hydraulic shaft turbines, a more efficient type of waterwheel that required the water from the sluice to be directed downward through penstocks or nozzles to push against the curved metal blades of the turbines. Both the overshot waterwheel and the turbine systems required only a relatively small volume of water to operate.

When the Edina Mill was running at its peak of performance, the mill dam generated as much as fifteen feet of hydraulic head (about 50 horsepower) and could grind roughly 150 bushels of wheat, oats, corn, or other small grains daily. (In addition to grain milling, the Edina mill dam also provided power for a blacksmith and machine shop by means of a wire rope or cable.) Craik and his sons were merchant millers, in that they shipped part of the mill’s product in barrels to market in Minneapolis. The quality of the flour made at the Edina Mill was probably less than satisfactory, however, because the hard spring wheat grown in Minnesota during the nineteenth century produced a grade of flour that was inferior to that made from winter wheat, which was softer, easier to grind, and produced a whiter flour. For making cornmeal, oatmeal, pearl barley, and animal feed, the old French burr stones could be set farther apart, with fewer grindings and screenings required to produce a marketable product.

Whenever the creek’s natural flow diminished below a certain level, the mill had to shut down. This happened most often during periods of prolonged summer drought and when late-winter ice jams blockaded Minnehaha Creek upstream from the mill. The effect of upstream dams also reduced the available hydraulic head at Edina; the construction of a water control structure at the mouth of Minnehaha Creek in 1893 forced Browndale Farm to use a gasoline engine to power the feed mill; after the new dam was built at Gray’s Bay in 1897, the district court indemnified Brown $2000 for the loss of his waterpower. In 1906 a severe flood washed out the mill dam and the county replaced the stone structure with the existing concrete spillway. The Edina Mill appears to have closed for good around this time, although the millhouse and related structures were not torn down until 1932. The site was later used as a dump.

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE
The Edina Mills Archaeological Site is historically significant because of its association with the Edina waterpower development and because the archaeological data it contains has potential value in answering important research questions. The 1977 archaeological investigation appears to have excavated only about 5% of the mill complex: the current state of knowledge about the site suggests that both Dwight William Park and the areas bordering the lower end of the Mill Pond have good potential for undisturbed cultural deposits associated with nineteenth century settlement and development activities. Contextually, the site relates to the broad theme of “The Agricultural Landscape (1851 to 1959)” and to the local study units “Edina Mills: Agriculture and Rural Life” and “Minnehaha Creek: From Wilderness Stream to Urban Waterway,” delineated in the 1999 Historic Context Study.

PLAN OF TREATMENT
The Edina Heritage Preservation Board uses the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties as the authoritative guide for its design review decisions. Within the framework of these standards, and in consultation with the property owner, the Board has adopted the following general and specific guidelines specially tailored to the preservation requirements of the Edina Mill Archaeological Site:

1) The Edina Mills Archaeological Site is the heritage preservation component of Dwight Williams Park and the Mill Pond; every reasonable effort shall be made to provide compatible uses for these publicly owned lands that require minimal alteration of the land surfaces above and under water.

2) Protective measures should be developed to safeguard the physical condition of known or suspected archaeological features from erosion or other damage caused by natural or human forces.

3) Archaeological features should be retained intact, whenever possible. Future archaeological investigations should emphasize non-intrusive, non-destructive methods of investigation such as remote sensing.

4) Stream bank stabilization should be accomplished in such a manner that the work detracts as little as possible from the archaeological site’s setting and environment.

5) Adjacent road construction and maintenance, flood control and water quality improvements should be conducted in such a manner that disturbance of terrain in and around the archaeological site is minimized.

6) Whenever archaeological resources must be disturbed by public works construction, recovery of archaeological data shall be undertaken in conformance with current professional practices.

7) Reconstruction of all or part of the historic mill complex for public interpretation may be appropriate, provided that sufficient historical documentation exists to insure an accurate reproduction of the original building(s) or structure(s). Reconstruction should include measures to preserve important archaeological resources intact, wherever possible.