For more than a century, a mill on Indian Creek supported early Jackson County settlers, helped drive the growth of south Kansas City, and gave its name to Watts Mill through three generations of the Watts family from before the Civil War to before World War II. Its origins reached back to 1838, when George and John Thomas Fitzhugh acquired land in what became south Jackson County and built a mill from native oak and walnut near Indian Creek, whose waters flowed from the Permanent Indian Frontier just across Missouri’s western border; later owners included Albert Gallatin Boone, and the site entered its great era when Anthony Watts bought it in 1852. After Anthony Watts died in 1861, his son Stubbins Watts carried the family business forward after the Civil War for another 50 years, making the mill not only a place where timber became planks and wheat became flour but also a social gathering place associated with picnics and music. The mill stood near routes used by the Santa Fe, Oregon, and California trails, which converged for 46 miles between Independence, Missouri, and Gardner, Kansas, and it served travelers and settlers in a landscape that also drew people to stay; Jim Bridger spent the last third of his life on a farm just south of the mill and remained connected to the area even after blindness ended his explorations. Indian Creek’s falls and gradient powered both a sawmill and a gristmill, though drought sometimes interrupted operations, and after the Civil War Stubbins Watts improved efficiency by installing a turbine; in 1922 his son Edgar added an electric motor, ending the mill’s full dependence on the creek after about 90 years. By 1911 the mill was operating six days a week, and in 1922 a Kansas City baking company advertised flour from “the famous Watts Mill,” but newer technologies gradually outmatched it: although a 1932 centennial celebration drew 6,000 people, the business closed by 1940, nine tons of iron from the mill went to the war effort in 1942, and the structure was razed in 1949 after roughly 115 years. The original mill predated Kansas City by about 20 years, and as the nearby community of Dallas was annexed in 1958 and development spread along Indian Creek on both sides of the Missouri-Kansas line, the site took on a new commercial life. Kroh Brothers acquired the land in 1947, a shopping center opened there in 1971 as the only nearby retail, John and Elizabeth Kroh donated three acres to Kansas City two years later, and the park was dedicated in 1974. Today Watts Mill remains a center of commerce and exchange, while Watts Mill Park, the Indian Creek Trail, surviving stone remains, and donated millstones preserve the memory of a place long tied to frontier travel, settlement, industry, recreation, and the natural beauty and occasional ferocity of Indian Creek.