Graue Mill, Grist and Freedom Along Salt Creek

Frederick Graue, a German immigrant, opened his grist mill along Salt Creek in eighteen fifty-two. The building's limestone basement came from a quarry near Lemont, the bricks were fired from clay on the Graue farm, and the four grinding stones were imported from France. For roughly sixty years, three generations of the Graue family milled grain for the surrounding community.

But the mill served a second purpose that its owner kept quiet. Graue was a committed abolitionist, and the mill became a station on the Underground Railroad, sheltering freedom seekers on their journey north. It is one of only three authenticated Underground Railroad stations in the state of Illinois. When advances in steel rolling mills put the old waterwheel operation out of business in the nineteen tens, the building sat derelict until the Civilian Conservation Corps restored it in the nineteen thirties and forties. Today it operates again as the only working waterwheel gristmill in the Chicago area.