In the middle of the 1840s, a young Scottish millwright named Peter Inglis was crossing the shallows at Rockford when he heard the distant roar of a waterfall. Investigating, he found a miller’s dreams –a flat rock surface for a mill foundation right next to a rushing cascade of water power provided by the fall of the Sydenham River over the Niagara Escarpment. Others who had already identified this fortunate site included a Goderich millwright and W. C. Boyd, an early Owen Sound entrepreneur.
Boyd sold his mill site to Peter Inglis in 1845. Peter then built a grist mill at the very brink of the falls. Two millstones were hauled up the three-mile Escarpment road from the docks at Owen Sound. In short order, the Inglis grist mill was opened for business. Peter Inglis built it and the farmers soon arrived, carrying their grain to be ground in horse-drawn wagons. Many, coming from long distances, would camp for a few days, using the sweepings from the mill for scones when their provisions ran low.
Flour and feed kept Peter Inglis busy until he died in 1901. Management of the mill was turned over to his son, William Inglis. William operated the mill until his death in 1923. At that time, it was called the Cascade Rolling Mills and produced several grades of flour called variously, Lily White, Five Lillies and King’s Taste. During the First World War, flour from the Inglis Mills was sent to the front to feed the troops.
The Inglis family carried on in business until 1932 when the City of Owen Sound bought the property to secure water rights. Two years later, Adolph and Emil Henkel bought the property back from the City, producing cracked wheat, wheat germ, pastry flour and Henkel’s Early Rise bread flour. And then, in 1945, the mill was completely destroyed by fire. Finally, this beautiful mill site passed into the hands of the North Grey Conservation Area where it is today, a choice destination for photographers, painters, and those who merely love a good fall of water.
Originally aired September 3rd 2016
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