Located within the Siskiyou County Historical Society Museum upstairs as part of numerous interpretive displays is a wall dedicated to a few flour mills that existed in Siskiyou County in the 1800s. On the floor and in front of the wall displays of pictures and verbiage is a millstone that once belonged to one of the mills (which mill is unknown).
The following verbiage can be read by museum visitors that highlights a few mills from Siskiyou County:
Grist Mills in Siskiyou County
Food was the chief concern of early miners in Siskiyou County since supplies had to be brought in on pack trains at high cost. Homesteaders and others envisioning a profitable market for farm products began to grow grain, but high prices continued due to the lack of grist mills to process it into flour.
The first grist mill in Siskiyou County was the Lafayette or Shores Mill erected in Quartz Valley in 1853. It was followed by the McDermitt, Moore, and Davidson Mill in Old Etna the next year. By 1880 there were five grist mills operating in the county, some run by water power, some by steam, making about 9,000 barrels of flour annually.
The Farmer's Mill, or Fort Jones Mill, was built cooperatively in 1865 in response to the abundance of grain produced in Scott Valley. Later, when the market was down, Ernest Reichman purchased the mill and built the business into a profitable enterprise by buying grain outright, milling it and then selling the "Patent" flour product direct to the trade. Boasting of a 30 barrel a day capacity, Fort Jones Mill was fitted with two sets of buhrstones powered by a low-speed steam engine requiring four cords of wood a day to fuel its twin boilers. This mill burned in 1889, but was rebuilt and began operating within two years. "XL" flour, a blended wheat product made by son Gus Reichman, soon became the mill's leading brand. Fort Jones Mill closed after the Great Depression when business declined. A portion of the stone/grout building stands today as a reminder of a once important part of Scott Valley's economic development.
Schlicht Mill
In 1854, Charles Schlicht, a native of Hanover, Germany, erected a grist mill three miles northeast of Yreka on the Shasta River. It took two years to complete the structure since no nails were used in its construction, and all the lumber was hewn on the spot from trees hauled down from the mountains west of Yreka. The machinery turning the milling stones (shafts, cogs and teeth) was also made of wood. Schlicht Mill operated until about 1890.