Greer Mill Historic Site

Day Hikes

Day Hikes Info

The 0.9 mile trail to the spring is relatively smooth, however there is a moderately steep incline down to the spring.

Interpretive Areas/Exhibits

Interpretive Areas/Exhibits Info

The mill was constructed in 1883 and restored in 2016. From the mill you can see Greer Spring, the 2nd largest spring in Missouri.

The Mill Building

The Greer Mill, located on Hwy. 19 in the Eleven Point District of the Mark Twain National Forest in Oregon County, is a frame 2½ story rolling mill set on a sandstone foundation. The rectangular mill has a side gable roof and a shed roofed 1 story rear extension. A side-gable cupola is centered on the mill roof. 

The Greer Mill building itself is 4 7x43 feet with its boundaries extending approximately 50 yards in each direction. These boundaries encompass the Mill building and yard.

The sloping terrain provides for a walk-out basement on the back of the building and leads down to Greer Spring which, at one time, powered the mill. The windows are typically 2/2 double-hung sash windows that are symmetrically placed in the unpainted clapboard walls. The milling equipment has been removed as has the complex system of cables and pulleys that ran between the spring and building to power the mill. 

Despite the loss of equipment, the building can readily be identified as a rural late 19th century grain mill and retains integrity of design, setting, materials, location, and setting, on a rugged hilltop in a remote area of the Ozark highlands. 

History of Greer Mill

Greer Mill stands as a picturesque reminder of a successful, if short lived attempt to bring modern industrial technology into a rural Ozarks setting. 

Between 1883 and 1899, Samuel Greer and his partner, George Mainprize, struggled heroically to harness the power of Greer Spring to run a flour mill on an isolated hilltop in south central Missouri. Greer's son lost his life in the process (see narrative below). 

Mainprize and his son ran the mill for a decade, enjoying some initial success, but finally losing their business to larger and more sophisticated mills in faraway cities that became accessible with the spread of railroads. The simple rustic form of the mill with its gabled cupola blends harmoniously with its wooded setting and seems to suggest the enduring qualities of the rugged Ozarks, which have long resisted the forces of modernization. 

In Water Mills of the Missouri Ozarks, historian George Suggs, Jr., noted that Greer Mill differed from most other such buildings in Missouri, because of its location on high ground approximately three-fourths of a mile from the springs that was its source of power. This location provided easier access for farmers bringing their grain to the mill, but necessitated a complex system of cables and pulleys to transmit power from the spring. 

Some remnants of the cable survive on the steep hill between the mill and the spring. The mill building remains substantially intact, and in Suggs' words, "is a majestic structure even in old age." Missouri artist Jake Wells commemorated this picturesque building in a painting, reproduced in Suggs' book.

Samuel Greer

Samuel Greer, an early settler of Oregon County, Missouri, played an important role in building the first, second, and third mills at Greer Spring. 

Born in Rockingham County, North Carolina, in 1828, he moved with his family to Tennessee in 1849 and Missouri in 1859. In that year, he and his father, John Greer, purchased property that included the spring, constructing a mill the following year. 

Samuel Greer became a captain in the Confederate Army during the Civil War and returned to Oregon County to find that Bushwhackers had burned his mill: By 1870, Captain Greer constructed a waterwheel, and a three-story mill, in which he installed machinery to grind corn, saw lumber, and gin cotton. This mill was located on the spring branch far below the site of the surviving mill.3 In 1883, Greer began construction on the new roller mill on top of the hill. 

A Modern Mill

Roller milling technology, developed in Europe in the mid-nineteenth-century, used ceramic-coated cylinders (rollers) rather than millstones, to crush grain. In the 1870s, American inventors improved the process, using steel rollers with belt drives to produce finely-ground flour. After 1880, many American millers replaced stones with rollers. Ultimately, however, the new technology would bring about the demise of the small mill, as the process became more efficient and sophisticated, requiring a greater investment in machinery.

In an attempt to modernize his operation and respond to a local demand for ground wheat products, Captain Greer formed a partnership with George Mainprize, who owned roller milling machinery in Howell County. Mainprize agreed to move his operation to Greer Spring and help with construction of a new mill. This was an arduous under which require rebuilding the old dam and creating the complex mechanism for transmitting power. The process resulted in the death of Samuel Greer's twenty-three-year-old son. Lewis Greer died on March 3, 1884, when a timber fell on him and pushed him down into the rocky ravine, filled with swift water, below the dam. Construction resumed a month later, but the family suffered greatly from the tragedy. 

Greer Mill Design

Greer Mill is a structured vernacular design based upon complex building traditions handed down through generations of carpenters and millwrights. Samuel Greer utilized methods of construction ascertained through manuals, experience, and necessity. 

As with all mill architecture Greer Mill's style was governed by functional considerations not ornamentation. The mill was structurally designed to fit machinery and equipment together in a unified system in order to receive, clean, move, grind, sift, and sack grain. Making use of local materials in construction Greer used heavy timbered knot free pine for framing and sandstone for the foundation. The heavy timbering was necessary to accommodate machine vibrations while harnessing the energy of the spring. 

Height was required to accommodate the elevator shafts and to house equipment. The basement was filled with shafts, pulleys, and conveyor boxes while the upper floors were left open to hold machinery according to the flow plan of the mill. The copula and double hung windows provided light and ventilation by drawing air through the mill in order to reduce flour dust. The large opening situated along the west side provided space for unloading 
delivery wagons. 

Hydro Power

The mill operated without electricity so power was derived from Greer Spring. Since the mill was unusually located 1140 feet above its source this made it a rare type in the state. The distance necessitated the ingenious method of transmitting power from the turbine operating in the water below to the mill positioned 011 top of the hill. The sophisticated drive system consisted of continuous steel cable strung on pulleys carried in three towers. The cables entered through the back of the mill connecting to drive gear that turned belts that in turn moved the machinery on the upper floors. 

New Owners

The new mill did not begin operation until 1899. In that year, Captain Greer, who was seventy-one years old, sold one-half interest in his property to Mainprize. Three years later, Mainprize sold his half-interest to his son George B. Mainprize. In 1904, Greer and Mainprize sold the spring and the land surrounding it to railroad entrepreneur Louis Houck. Greer and Mainprize retained full rights to the use of the mill machinery. 

Mainprize continued to run the mill with great success until 1909. Demand for his services was so intense during this period that fanners sometimes had to camp out for two or three days waiting for their grain to be ground. Since neighbors in the area were widely scattered harvest time brought them together in one spot where they renewed associations and gathered news. Here, at the mill they had the chance to meet new people, exchange information about deaths, marriages, land sales, politics, and religion. The mill provided the campground, a general store, and a cookhouse for its customers. Greer Mill facilitated social intercourse and helped to make living in isolated areas more acceptable. The mills success however was short lived. 

In 1909, Mainprize sold the milling operation to Sampson Williams and Louis Parrott, who quickly discovered that they did not want to continue in this business. Ira M. Williams and George F. Mormon took over and ran the mill until 1916, when Mormon purchased another mill at Fremont. Williams and his 
son-in-law, Cleve Bockman operated the mill until 1920, when it closed down permanently.

End of an Era

Railroads, which Houck helped to finance, contributed to the downfall of the enterprise. Bigger mills in the surrounding area could ship flour by rail into the villages and hamlets of the Ozarks. Local farmers no longer had to grow grain except to feed livestock. Houck sold the Greer Spring property to the Missouri Iron and Steel Corporation of St. Louis in August 1919. Three years later, the Missouri Iron and Steel Corporation sold the land to Louis E. Denning. The Denning family held the property for more than sixty years. By the l 970s, the dam . had blown out, and most of the cables had rotted away and disappeared, but the old weather-beaten mill remained intact.

Change of Ownership

In 1987, the Anheuser-Busch company offered to buy the 7,000-acre property containing Greer Spring. Newspapers reported that the famous St. Louis brewery wanted to bottle water from the spring. Conservationist protested, and environmentalist Leo Drey of St. Louis stepped in to purchase the tract from the Denning family, including the mill. Drey offered to hold it for eventual sale to the United States Forest Service of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) at a price of $500,000 less than he paid.