Old Missoula

Area’s Milling Starts in 1840s

Montana’s important flour-milling industry started in the Bitter Root.

Old-timers recall how their parents looked forward to spring and the first trip of the season to the flour mill at the Stevensville Mission. Folks on a heavy meat diet get awfully hungry for bread.

Farm wagons came from as far away as the Gallatin Valley to get flour from what is thought to be the area’s first mill. Its mill stones started turning in the 1840s.

W. V. Gannon, vice president of Montana Flour Mills Co. at Great Falls, reports that mill stones for the mill had to be imported. The first set of stones is displayed at the State Capitol.

First Commercial Mill

While the missionaries were the first to build a mill, another water-powered flour mill was built near here well over 100 years ago. Also located near Stevensville, in Burnt Fork Creek, it is supposed to have been the first commercial mill in the area.

Gannon – who was the first superintendent for Montana Flour Mills Missoula operation – dug the heavy mill stones from this larger mill out of Burnt Fork Creek and took them to Great Falls. There they can be seen in a monument on the lawn of Montana Flour Mills Co. The wheels were installed in the Burnt Fork mill by Major John Owen in 1856. Gannon thinks these mill stones were quarried in Belgium, shipped to the New World around South America’s Cape Horn, and brought up the Columbia River.

Jumping from the early settlement of the state into the twentieth century, we find grain production responsible for supporting a good portion of Montana’s industry.

Wheat is Montana’s biggest crop and it, with other grains, has kept Treasure State from being a misnomer. Wheat and barley, cattle and sheep . . . these are the crops that have made the spendable income of Montana farmers among the highest in the nation.

Montana Flour Mills Co., active in Missoula for 25 years, is but one of many firms built on the grain buying – handling – processing industry. The firm started as a country elevator in central Montana in 1904, expanding into the flour milling business in 1911. It currently operates flour mills at Bozeman and Great Falls in Montana, and at Fergus Falls, Minn. Combined daily capacity of these mills in 6,700 hundredweight of flour.

Purchased in 1935

In 1935, Montana Flour Mills purchased the Northern Milling Co. flour mill at 909 S. 3^rd St.The mill had been out of production for some time, but it was rebuilt and began milling a complete line of family and bakery flours.

The remodeled mill didn’t operate long, however. Continental Baking Co. bought a portion of it in 1940 and went into the production of whole wheat flour. Several years later this firm dismantled the mill, reselling the real estate to Montana Flour Mills in 1945.

When Continental bought part of the mill in 1940, Montana Flour Mills Co. converted the remaining portion into a modest feed manufacturing plant. It included facilities for making poultry, swine and dairy feeds. Feed manufacturing in Missoula was a logical step for Montana Flour Mills as it had pioneered Montana’s formulated feed business. The firm started production of formulated Ceretana feeds at Bozeman in 1923.

Spectacular Fire Hits

A disastrous fire in 1949, one of the most spectacular ever seen in Missoula, wiped out the feed plant and warehouse. New, modern facilities were rebuilt on the same site, being completed in 1951.

Roy Meyers, manager of the local operation, says the manufacture and sale of Ceretana livestock and poultry feed is the company’s principal activity here. Feed from the Missoula plant is distributed in the Flathead, Bitter Root, and Blackfoot valleys and even into Idaho. It operates a farm and garden store at the original location, 909 S. 3^rd St.

The firm’s most recent expansion in Missoula came in May of 1959 when it purchased the facilities formerly known as the Centennial Mill and Misco Mill from Teslow Inc. Three pellet mills in this plant manufacture all types of feed.

Two Groups Benefit

Feed manufacturing at Missoula has helped two agricultural groups prosper. Grain producers get higher prices for their barley, wheat and oats while livestock producers make more economical gains.

Scientific feed formulation coupled with improved livestock has brought about a real revolution in agriculture. Today we are getting 40 per cent more beef per cow, 20 per cent more pork per sow, 45 per cent more eggs per hen, and 30 per cent more milk per dairy cow than we were only 15 years ago, according to a feed industry spokesman.

Montana cropland has been shifted from wheat to barley as grain surpluses grew. While most of this barley is going into government storage, hundreds of tons of it are converted into livestock feed each year for the Missoula area. Even Montana’s wheat industry benefits from local feed manufacturing: 140 pounds of wheat are required to mill 100 pounds of flour. The remaining forty pounds are valuable by-products for formulated feeds.

While feed manufacturing is not nearly as old as some other Missoula industries, it seems certain to be here for the area’s next centennial celebration.