For centuries this region was the homeland of the Dakota and Ojibwe people. In the late 1700s, French and British fur traders arrived and, by the late 1800s, Euro-American settlement had pushed the tribes onto reservations. Lumber and agriculture became the major industries of Otter Tail County, and wheat became its leading crop. Abundant rivers, streams, and creeks provided water power that made the county a regional center of milling, as waterwheels turned millstones that ground grain into flour. Near this spot, James Craigie, a Scottish immigrant who came to Otter Tail County in 1861 with his wife Margaret and daughter Annie, built the Craigie Flour Mill, the county's first flour and grist mill. After several years away because of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, he returned, established a settlement he called Balmoral, built a dam across the creek now known as Balmoral Creek, and completed the mill in 1870. Using millstones brought from Scotland, the mill ground wheat, barley, oats, and rye brought by wagon from as far as 40 miles away, with some farmers camping nearby while they waited. Craigie sold his product as Snow Flake Flour, and the mill prospered because it spared local farmers the trip to mills in Alexandria. In September 1872, James and Margaret Craigie and a young woman visiting from Scotland drowned in a sailing accident on Otter Tail Lake. After litigation, ownership of the mill passed to their daughter Annie, who operated it with her husband for several years until her death in 1879. The mill was razed in the 1930s.