The Unifine process of milling flour was the idea of an Englishman, John Wright. This process of milling flour produced a whole wheat flour with a lengthier period of rancid-free storage than ordinary whole wheat flour. Moreover, the flour had baking properties similar to enriched white flour. Wright approached the Washington State College Division of Industrial Research with his idea in the late 1940s, and period of experimentation with the mill soon began. The mill could not be patented, but Washington State College controlled the registration of the name "Unifine" until 1975.
One commercial application of the unifine technology was the Unifine Milling Company of Pullman. In 1981 this company began producing flour for sale to the public under the name "Flourgirls." This firm continued in operation until about 1995.
This collection consists of selected records of the Unifine Milling Company collected and preserved by Beverly McConnell, one of five women who owned and operated the company from 1985 until it ceased operations in 1995. It includes recipes, sales and marketing documents, reports, financial information, product information, mill records, documents related to an attempted private placement stock offering, and photographs.
The collection is arranged in a single series.
This collection is open and available for research use.
Copyright restrictions apply.
[Item description]
Unifine Milling Company Records, 1950-1999 (Cage 787)
Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, WA.
Steven McConnell donated this collection to the Washington State University Libraries in 2012 (MS 2012-25).
This collection was processed by Cheryl Gunselman.
Unifine Milling Company Records, 1949-1996
Flour Power Engineering Report on the Unifine Flour Mill Manuscript, 2010
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the online catalog. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search the catalog using these headings.