The earliest commercial activity in the Village of Menominee Falls centered on this site, around which the present downtown developed. Frederick Nehs, one of the area’s earliest settlers, erected a four story stone grist mill here in 1851. The mill operated on water power generated by a wooden dam at the site of a rock falls in approximately the same location as the present Lepper Dam. The waterfall and rapids that powered the Nehs Mills extended another half mile downstream to the historic lime kilns, where other early commercial and industrial operators were established. The Nehs Mill operated until 1939, and the original mill dam was rebuilt in 1886 and again in 1954.