President Brigham Young directed Mariner W. Merrill to explore new town sites, and from Merrill's survey several families from Richmond, Utah crossed the Bear River on April 15, 1865, and settled in the Weston area, where the first dugouts were built in the Meadows of Cedarville. In 1866, James Mack built a grist mill on Weston Creek south of the present town site, and its location caused the proposed town to be relocated. Rock was hauled from Cedar Hills to build the mill, and Mack obtained machinery from Thatcher's in Logan, including 3 1/2 foot stone burrs for grinding grain, a small grain cleaner, two stands of elevators, one centrifugal reel, and a 13 1/4 foot James Leffel turbine that had been freighted west in 1859. The grist mill launched the new town of Weston and was the only mill on the west side of Bear River. For many years it operated 24 hours per day to meet the needs of Weston, Oxford, Clifton, Dayton, Clarkston, and Cornish. Because Weston also lay on the gold road to mines in northern Idaho and Montana, settlers shipped flour and other food items northward, and the town quickly became a shipping center that was further enhanced when the railroad arrived in 1890. The mill was often remodeled over the next 100 years and changed owners several times, operating in a modernized world with steel rollers and advanced technology, but it could not survive for very long in the post World War II era.