Benson Grist Mill: Bread of the Pioneer Valley
Near Salt Lake City, Utah
Out in Tooele County west of the Oquirrh Mountains, the Benson Grist Mill has been turning grain into flour since eighteen fifty-four. The mill was authorized in eighteen fifty by LDS Church Apostle Ezra Taft Benson, who received approval from Brigham Young to develop a mill site on Twin Springs Creek to feed the Mormon communities settling Tooele Valley. The Lee brothers, skilled craftsmen, were hired to build it; they hauled massive mortised timbers by wagon from the Oquirrh Mountains and assembled a structure solid enough to outlast everyone who built it.
By eighteen sixty the mill was producing twelve hundred barrels of flour a year along with tons of bran and cornmeal. For nearly a century, farmers from across Tooele County made the trip here by horse and wagon to grind their grain. The mill operated until the late nineteen thirties before falling into disuse and near ruin.
A volunteer committee rescued it in the nineteen eighties, and the restored mill now operates as a Tooele County museum, the millstones still turning on demonstration days.
