U.S.A., Flour Bag Seal, Imperial Mill, Duluth, Minnesota, Image & Found by Foundit.
Found in Roxburghshire Scottish Borders, 20mm.
DULUTH / IMPERIAL / MILL / 00 // DULUTH / USA / MINN
An American flour bag seal from the Imperial Mills, Duluth, Minnesota. With thanks to Crepitis for the identification.
From the Zenith City Archives, "All the grain flowing from the Dakotas and Western Minnesota to Duluth’s and Superior’s mammoth grain elevators made the Twin Ports a natural spot for flour mills to flourish. The first, Superior Roller Mills, went up across the bay in west Superior in 1882, producing two hundred barrels a day. But shallow water hindered delivery of grain — and the mill’s growth. In 1886 the Duluth Roller Mill arose along the bay at Sixth Avenue West about where Bayfront Festival Park sits today. It began as a small operation, producing about 250 barrels a day. It struggled financially and was sold through a Sheriff’s auction in 1887 and reopened in 1888.
That same year pioneer Roger Munger partnered with Bradford C. Church and T. A. Olmstead and established Imperial Mills on the east side of Rice’s Point at 600 Garfield Avenue. While Duluthians had been milling flour for years at a modest capacity, the Imperial Mill — built with what was then considered an experimental design — was considered “the most complete ever built” and at six stories high was by far the largest in the Twin Ports. With crews working day and night, Imperial could pump out 1,500 barrels of flour each day in its new mill, which ran on the power supplied by a 600-horsepower Reynolds-Cross steam engine. By the end of 1889, the facility had increased production to 8,000 barrels a day, an earmark its owners claimed surpassed “previous records of all other flour mills in the world.” That year Imperial built wooden grain elevators #4 and #5. By 1892 Imperial was the largest flour mill in the world, producing 6,300 barrels a day. Red River wheat was delivered to the mill on railroad tracks, shoveled into the mill on one side and rolled out as flour in barrels on the other, loaded straight into vessels docked there in slip #1. At the end of the century, only Minneapolis’s Pillsbury “A” mill could produce more flour than Duluth’s Imperial."
