Trenton-Clarkston Mill and Elevator Company records, 1912-1931

The Trenton-Clarkston Mill and Elevator Company was organized at Trenton to take advantage of the double agricultural windfall in the production of dryland wheat on the Clarkston Bench and irrigated wheat grown in fields newly watered by the West Cache Irrigation Company (q.v.) which was completed to Trenton in 1905. To mill the wheat into flour and to provide for storage and shipping facilities, the Trenton-Clarkston Mill and Elevator Company was incorporated on August 7, 1906, with a capitalization of $25,000 divided into 1,000 shares at a par value of $25 per share. It was largely financed by local money, as the following list of the incorporators, their residence, and their initial shareholdings show:

The company built a mill and elevators on the railroad near the Ransom siding in 1906. To handle the extra traffic, the railroad company installed a second siding and built a depot. Obligingly, the railroad named the new station Trenton and made it headquarters for two section crews. To supply electricity for the mill, the High Creek Electric Company of Franklin built a line into Trenton in 1906--the first town on the West Side to be electrified. The High Creek Electric Company used the waters of Cub River to generate power. Since irrigation companies held prior rights to the water, electric service to the towns supplied by the company was largely discontinued during the summer months when most of the water was diverted from the river to irrigation canals.

The Trenton-Clarkston Mill was an immediate success. German-born miller Julius F.H. Stender produced a superior product based on the locally produced "Turkey Red" wheat. Two additional elevators were soon built on the west siding at Trenton, the Farmer's Grain and Milling Company with a capacity of 50,000 bushels and the Kay Elevator Company with a capacity of about 65,000 bushels. With the production from the Clarkston dry-farms and from the newly irrigated lands around Trenton, in 1917 Trenton was the leading wheat shipping point on the entire Union Pacific system.

The Trenton-Clarkston Mill flourished until 1917. The mill lost its large market during World War I when government wheat-saving regulations forced the increase in per-bushel flour production. Forced to decrease quality, the "Turkey Red" brand was no longer welcome to wholesalers. Whole carloads of flour were returned to Trenton. The mill temporarily closed in 1918 or 1919 and then reopened, but it was hardly to halcyon days. It closed in the early 1920s ad was reopened largely as an elevator and feed company as the Trenton Grain and Milling Company.n