Going into the restored Benson Gristmill is like stepping inside a 3 1/2-story, 19th-century wood-and-stone machine, one with uncounted wheels, cogs, pulleys, shafts, chutes, bins and elevators belts.
But for some the mill is more than an impressive, if antique, grinder and sifter: This is a place of memories."I remember when we would back our truck up here and unload it," Owen Cluff, of nearby Lake Point, said as he walked out of the structure and onto the east platform with members of his family. "Then we'd park the truck in the canal and wash it." In the meantime, the miller would take the Cluffs' dozen or so 100-pound bags, process the wheat and have it ready to go as the truck was drying off.
"Gosh, he could run that through here pretty fast."
The miller would split the processed flour with his customers, 50-50. That was the deal. The family then had enough "to take us through the winter," Cluff said.
His remembrances go back a ways, for the mill - built in 1854 - halted operations about 50 years ago. By the early 1980s the building had lost most of its roof and many of the slats on its walls. Pictures inside today's restored mill show a weather-worn, gap-pocked structure that appeared to be on its last legs.
The miracle, said Marilyn Shields, now the site's director and one of the founding members of a committee that set out to save the historic mill, is that much of the machinery inside remained intact and that engineers deemed the over-all structure sound enough to preserve.
The Benson Gristmill is located north of Stansbury Park, just west of the junction of U-36, the main north-south route through Tooele County, and U-138, which heads on to Grantsville. The site is about 26 miles west of downtown Salt Lake City via I-80, and about 10 miles north of Tooele.
Almost a century and a half ago, this area - a transportation junction even then - was what we'd call today an "industrial park."
A sawmill was built first on Twin Spring Creek in 1851 - just four years after the Mormon pioneers had settled in nearby Great Salt Lake City. In 1854, under the direction of Ezra T. Benson and others, the gristmill was built on the pond by Thomas Lee and his brothers at what became known as Richville and Mills Junction. A tannery and a wool pullery were among the other operations.
"This little town has as much history as anyplace," Shields said.
The ill-fated Donner-Reed Party of 1846, hopeful gold miners and other California-bound emigrants came this way, using the springs available along the Great Salt Lake's south shore. (Grantsville was originally called Twenty Wells, Shields noted.) Capt. Howard Stansbury, who explored and surveyed the lake and its islands for the U.S. Army in the early 1850s, built a little house at the base of a rocky prominence just to the east, giving the spot its name: Adobe Rock. This was subsequently the stagecoach route and, in the 20th century, part of the cross-country Lincoln Highway for early automobile travel. Today's I-80 traffic speeds by a bit farther to the north.
The gristmill changed hands several times during its first century. It was owned by the LDS Church from 1878 to 1900, and by the Richville Milling Co. until 1922. After that, the mill and property were owned by LDS leader J. Reuben Clark and his family, until 1970, when it was purchased by the development company Terracor.
A volunteer committee that was determined to save and restore and mill was formed in 1983, headed by Grantsville resident Jack Smith.
"We concluded that if somebody didn't do it, we'd lose it," Shields said as she led a tour group through. She pointed out the wood-and-rawhide pegs that hold large wooden beams in place, the old leather and canvass elevator belts that carried grains between levels - and shafts still stuffed with old bird nests.
There's still a lot of work - and a good deal of learning - to do. That's why she was glad to meet Bob and Lorena Thornton of Dugway, part of her tour group.
Lorena Thornton's father, Jerrold Dalton, started working at the old All-O-Wheat mill in Ogden in 1954 and eventually bought the place. Bob Thornton, in turn, took over the operation - and kept it going into the 1980s.
By then, because of economics, "the little guys got squeezed out," Thornton said.
The Ogden mill, the Thorntons said, was built just a year later than the Benson mill - in 1855 - by another early LDS figure, John Taylor, a future church president. Although the equipment has been parceled out to historic societies and others, the tall light-green structure still stands near Riverdale Road, just off the overpass spanning the railroad tracks.
"It makes us cry every time we go by," Lorena Thornton said.
But the Thorntons were happy to talk about rollers and breaks and grain and bran and to share information and contacts; Shields, in turn, was pleased to meet millers with such pertinent experience.
The mill site has become a repository for Tooele County's history. A windmill stands tall just to the east of the mill; an old pioneer cabin, built in 1872 by Andrew Barker Forsyth, has been restored and placed there; William "Billy" Bolinder's blacksmith shop is full of old tools. A replica miller's home serves as the six-acre park's headquarters. There's a picnic pavilion, and Shields hopes to set up a general store next year.
In addition, the Benson Gristmill is now home to an annual pageant about the mill and the Tooele Valley's pioneer history, put on every August.
Indeed, it's hard to believe that only a dozen years ago the old mill - listed since 1972 on the National Register of Historic Places - was falling into ruin. For today, at this still-busy junction, it seems such a vital and valuable tribute to the region's pioneers and their descendants.
The Benson Gristmill is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. through Nov. 1 this year. On Saturdays, until 4 p.m., local crafts and crops are featured at the Harvest Festival centered around the picnic pavilion. For more information call 1-801-882-7678 or 1-801-882-7137.