32268 County Road 1
St. Cloud, MN, USA

National Register of Historic Places - Francis Arnold House (Heim House)

Statement of Significance:

As a miller’s house, the 1884 Francis Arnold House is associated with National Register Criterion A under the area of significance, "Industry," specifically water-powered flour milling in Steams County during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. The setting and location of the Arnold House is unique within the county for conveying a sense of place and exhibiting excellent historical physical integrity. The house, at the confluence of the Sauk and Mississippi Rivers, is located across the road from the 1887 replacement water-powered flour mill owned by Arnold, still standing but much altered. It reflects the small family owned and operated meal flour milling operations which served a local market during the late nineteenth century in Steams County and Minnesota outside the larger cities of the state. These mills used direct waterpower and were thus located on streams which could be dammed to provide power for turbines. Sixteen water powered mills operated in Steams County before 1900.1 Small rural mills were usually owner-operated and in the case of the Arnold house, the miller lived near his mill. As such, the Arnold House is an associated property type under the context of owner-operated water-powered flour mills in Steams County. If wheat was available from local farmers, the Arnold mill continued to operate. In 1933, it was converted to a feed mill because of the gradual decline in wheat production in Steams County in the years following World War I.

As a property type, a rural family-run water-powered flour mill might consist of a mill, dam, millrace, and associated miller’s house or operator’s house. The Arnold mill, dating from an 1886 rebuilding, was located on the south side of the Sauk River north of downtown St. Cloud. Across the road to the east is located the miller’s house, built in 1884. The power for the Arnold Mill came from a dam upstream on the Sauk River, with a mill race west of the mill. The mill was converted from a flour mill to a feed mill in 1933, thus ending its significance as a water-powered flour mill. The dam is gone and the mill building, rebuilt in 1887, was covered in white metal siding in 1979-80, and had had several additions including a warehouse. Its original equipment has been removed including its turbines in the late 1960s. No pre-1933 machinery is extant in the mill today. But the miller’s house across the road to the east is largely intact and continues to convey a sense of time and place.

Steams County was established in 1855, and St. Cloud was first settled in 1851, incorporated as a town in 1856, and as a city in 1868.2 Local milling was an early industry to newly settled areas such as Steams County and St. Cloud where the first cash crop was wheat. Early milling was located along rivers to take advantage of cheap and available waterpower. Farmers could bring the wheat to local millers to have it ground into flour. Of the sixteen water-powered or water-steam mills found by Robert Frame in Steams County, virtually none of the original buildings, mills or millers’ houses, survive today in the county.3 Frame found 804 different mill sites in Minnesota occupied before 1900 which used waterpower, steam, gas, wind or electricity. But by the end of 1976, only 24 nineteenth century water-power mills remained in the state.4 Both lumber and flour mills were subject to fire, but especially flour mills, whose wooden interiors were filled with highly combustible flour dust.

In Steams County there are no nineteenth century water-powered flour milling sites on the National Register. However, the steam powered Swany White Flour Mill and Miller’s House in Freeport in western Steams County has been placed on the Register. Steam power meant that a mill could be built anywhere. In eastern Steams County, the Sauk River was a major tributary emptying into the Mississippi just north of the City of St. Cloud. The Sauk was harnessed for water powered milling in the last half of the nineteenth century during European settlement. The Andreas’ Atlas of Minnesota, for example, indicates that along the Sauk River’s banks toward its mouth was located the Hayward Mill, which burned in 1880, and Francis Arnold’s mill, the latter at its confluence with the Mississippi River. The same source indicates that south of the early campus of the state normal school was Bridgeman’s Mill on the Mississippi.

Robert Frame, a Minnesota milling scholar, noted that: "almost every major stream of any size had one or more flouring mills along its banks ... the Sauk river, the Crow River and Clearwater River were extensively used for waterpower". Frame’s research in the late 1970s indicated that of some 16 water-powered mills in Steams County, the Fair Haven Mill on the Clearwater River; Arnold’s or Heim’s mill on the Sauk; the Sauk Center Flouring Mills (now an apartment building on the Sauk River at Sauk Center; the Ward Brothers Grist Mill on the south branch of Two Rivers at Holding ford; and the Rockville Flouring Mills on Mill Creek in Rockville were still extant. The Melrose Flouring Mills on the Sauk River at Melrose has been demolished, but the mill dam and mill foundations remain.6 In the immediate area of St. Cloud, only three flour mills were operating when Arnold died in 1906: the LeSauk Roller Mills (Arnold’s), the St. Cloud City Mills at 116 7th Avenue N., and the George Tileston Milling Company with offices at 18 5th Avenue S.7 The Tileston mill was rebuilt in 1918, and the miller’s house was built in the fashionable residential area of St. Cloud west of the mill and north of the St. Cloud State University campus. Tileston was not an owner-operator.

The site of the Arnold mill is perhaps the earliest in Steams County, certainly in the St. Cloud area.8 A notice in the Sauk Rapids Frontiersman on December 8, 1859, gave notice of the operation of what was to become Francis Arnold’s mill:

The Sauk City flouring mill at the mouth of Sauk River, is yet doing a first-rate business. Fears were entertained that the severe cold weather might prevent its mining during a part of the season, but from the experience already had, it is confidently hoped that there will be little or no interruption in grinding, the entire winter. If this should prove to be the case, it will give much additional value and importance to this establishment.

According to Arnold’s 1906 obituary,9 he was one of St. Cloud area’s veteran millers. He was born in Germany January 20, 1821, and immigrated to the United States in 1850, first living in Milwaukee and Chicago and then in LaPorte, Indiana, where he entered the milling business. In 1857, he moved to Kandiyohi County where he became a pioneer of the Columbia townsite in 1857 whose brief existence all but ended with the 1862 U.S. Government-Dakota Conflict. While there, he opened a store where the first county officers were elected. Arnold also served as postmaster and county treasurer. He was married in Indiana to Hattie Kouts and moved to Minnesota with William Kouts "the trail blazer" who settled in the Columbia area with other Germans.

In 1859-60, he moved to the St. Cloud area ostensibly for his health. His first business venture was a sawmill located at the mouth of the LaSauk Creek, the site of the Arnold mill, which was swept away by flood. In 1859, Arnold bought an interest in the Hayes and Fletcher flour mill, and by 1875 was its sole proprietor. In the fifteen years he had business partners, the business operated under the name Arnold and Sims until 1868 and then Arnold and Stanton until 1875. The 1860 Federal Census of Manufactures indicates that this mill, which operated as the Sauk City Milling Company, was one of only three in the St. Cloud area. It was a grist mill in 1860 using 2000 bushels of wheat and 1000 bushels of com from which to grind com meal and manufacture 400 barrels of flour. 11 Arnold rebuilt the mill in 1876, but this building was destroyed in a mill explosion in 1886. In 1884, the following notice appeared in the St. Cloud Journal Press: "Mr. Frank Arnold has begun work on a handsome veneer brick residence near his mill, that will cost $5,000. "12 Again, in 1887, Arnold rebuilt the 1876 wood-framed mill, replacing it with the present mill across the road from the Arnold House. He also built the Sauk River dam at the site. After rebuilding, Arnold marketed his flour under the label "Snowbird" for which he received a prize for the "World’s Best Flour" at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. However, the Panic of 1893 took a toll on his financial health. Unable to recover, in 1898, he lost the mill when it was sold at public auction. He retained a life lease on the house, however.

In 1900, after two years when the property was tied up in court, the mill and house were sold to John and George W. Heims, hence the most recent name, "Heims Mill." Arnold retained his life lease in the house, where he remained. In 1906 when Francis Arnold died, George Heim moved into the miller’s house where he and his descendants lived until 1987 when the property was purchased by the present owners, Lewis and Doris Wixon. Under the Heims family, the mill was operated initially as the "Le Sauk Roller Mills" with George W. Heim, proprietor. It manufactured both flour and feed under the brand names "Snowbird" and "Old Glory. "13 After Heims moved into the house, the original front porch was replaced so that the current one probably dates from the Heims occupation. Leonard Heims, a grandson of George Heims, indicated that the mill ceased producing flour in 1933 and the flour machinery was removed. The mill ceased running on waterpower in 1965 and the turbines were removed and placed on the hill outside the mill building

According to Steams County sources, the Arnold mill was associated historically with the St. Cloud vicinity. Early enterprise in St. Cloud was in "Lower Town" above the Mississippi River where the state University now stands. Heavy industry in St. Cloud needed lower ground near the Mississippi’s abundant waterpower. The area below 10th Avenue on the west side of the river became the site of early water powered mills and a canal system with flumes and power take-off shafts. The George Tileston Flour Mill, built in 1888, was also part of this complex. Built at the enormous cost of $80,000, the nearby Manitoba Railroad spur brought in as many as 15 carloads of wheat to the water-powered Tileston mill. Tileston died in a buggy accident in 1895, and his mill burned down in 1915.15 Tileston built a fine mansion northwest of the present St. Cloud University campus in 1892,16 which still reflects the prosperity of his enterprise. The only miller’s house in the city of St. Cloud proper, the Tileston House is located at the northeast comer of Third Avenue and Fourth Street South in the fashionable neighborhood of St. Cloud in the 1890s.

As an associated property type to Steams County water-powered flour mills, the Arnold House stands as a rare surviving milling-associated resource in the county. By arriving early in the settlement of St. Cloud, in 1859, Arnold was able to obtain an ideal mill site just north of the city at the mouth of the Sauk and Mississippi rivers a mile north of present-day St. Cloud. This mill site accommodated both his mill and his residence in one location. When his mill burned to the ground in 1886, his new house across the road was only two years old. He was approached unsuccessfully by the city fathers to move his milling operation to Lower Town. On December 8, 1886, in an article entitled "The Red Fiend" the St. Cloud Times noted:

It is understood that efforts will be made to induce Mr. Arnold to build on the dam in lower town, but no such arrangement can be perfected, as he has all his interests, in the vicinity of the destroyed mill. The foundation on the outside looks solid and can probably be used for the new mill. The dam and waterpower are his own, and he has no idea of abandoning the location.

Both the miller’s house and Arnold’s mill had granite foundations. The 1876 mill foundation survived the 1886 fire, and the frame mill was rebuilt. The house foundation is also granite. Framel8 described the surprisingly sparing use of granite as a building material: "Granite was a difficult material to build with. . . difficult to quarry and shape with hand tools and difficult to ship without adequate transportation. For the most part the use of granite was confined to foundation walls, windowsills, and window lintels and stone trim." Arnold remained in his house, which the fire spared. He reused the granite foundation of the older mill when he erected his new mill. Because the Arnold flour mill operation was a smaller scale operation than the Tileston mill, Arnold built his residence near the mill to facilitate "hands-on" operation of the business. Cawker’s American Flour Mill and Elevator Directory for 1890-91 indicated that even after rebuilding, Arnold’s mill, then equipped with rollers, only produced 200 barrels of flour a day.

The Heim family under the direction of George Heim continued to mill flour while living in the Arnold House after Arnold died in 1906. George Heim’s son, John Heim, then took over the operation, and by 1979, Leonard and Dave Heim were running the mill with their three sons.20 In 1933, John Heim realized that farmers were no longer growing enough wheat to supply a flour mill and converted the Heim mill to a feed mill operation. The turbine was removed around 1968, and in 1979 the mill received a new white metal exterior and a new bridge across the Sauk River. The house remained essentially intact. It is almost certain that the Heim family rebuilt the front porch after they acquired the house in 1906. The Arnold House was liv^ in continuously by two milling families from its erection in 1884 until the Heim family sold the house in 1987 to the present owners. Located in a proposed Mississippi River Heritage Corridor, the Arnold House sits to the east across the North River Road from the mill at the mouth of the Sauk River today, just as it always has, a quiet reminder of the early milling era in the St. Cloud environs.