Then and now: Echo Roller Mill
Around 1881, Samuel G. Havermale and partner George A. Davis began building what would be Spokane’s second flour mill, but only the first roller mill in Washington Territory. The city’s first mill, built by Frederick Post, used flat stones to grind the wheat into flour, a much slower process. The Echo Roller Mill, with a 14-foot water wheel to drive the steel rollers, began operations in November of 1883.
Section:Gallery
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The wood-framed four-and-a-half story Echo Roller Mill, pictured here in the 1880s, was key to the growing wheat farming industry in Eastern Washington since it opened in 1883. It stood on Havemale Island until it burned to the ground in 1892, then rebuilt in brick. It stood until 1927. In the foreground is the intake for an early hydroelectric generating project. The mill was one of Spokane’s most promiment industrial businesses in its era. It was torn down by the Great Northern Railroad to allow realignment of trackage near the Great Northern Depot.
The Spokesman-Review Photo Archive Sr
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The Spokane River shoreline through Riverfront Park is almost unrecognizable from the earliest photo after more than a century of blasting to clear obstructions and construction over various channels and have changed the contours, shown Friday, May 29, 2020. The area that once had water-powered flour mills, laundries, power generators and a saw mill in early Spokane is now a park. The Upper Falls Power Plant, center right, still produces electricity for Avista, the modern name of Washington Water Power Company.
Jesse Tinsley The Spokesman-Review
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