which were carried by ox team wagon to the railroad head. This rail head was at times as far away as 75 to 100 miles. This mill was at times referred to as “Milford Mill”. After the older boys of Thomas R. Hughes left to participate in the Civil War, they rarely came back to Iowa. Hughes sold the mill, which apparently had been somewhat modified to permit some grain milling, to Soper in 1866 and as the availability of logs decreased it was modified into only a grist mill for flour. Coon's biography says this mill was the first sawmill in the county.
By 1869, a brief newspaper article said the Mill had been constructed to contain only the “two runs of burrs” for the grinding of grain.
In 1896 there appeared an article in the Roland Paper asking the academic question as to why the law wasn't being followed in the case of the Milford Mills dam. There wasn't a fish ladder that permitted fish to migrate up the river and hundreds of good sized fish were being removed from the river by “any means”, including seines, sharp sticks, etc. The article lamented the fact that the fishing was nonexistent above the dam.
By 1896 the river flow was just beginning to recover from the drought of previous years, particularly 1895 when the river was at record low flow. In the Summer of 1896 there is an article in the Nevada Paper which reads-- “The jolliest picnic crowd yet was on Saturday last at the mill. It consisted of the McCallsburg Sunday school, and the leading feature of the program was the ladies' march up and down the middle of the river, which was greatly enjoyed by the male portion of the school, especially the part where the ladies jumped over the crawfish. Howard Reid and Ward Hamilton carried off the honors of the shooting match and Carl Anderson was obliged to go one half mile after a can of water”
Only by the most careful observation at the current time can one find any evidence of the dam's existence. The current road crosses the river at the site of the mill and the original house on the hillside is long gone.
