Built in 1867 by pioneers Richard Little, Joseph Bowles, and John Lilley, among others, the Rough and Ready Mill stood at the present-day corner of Santa Fe Drive and Bowles Avenue and produced flour, lumber, and livestock feed while driving Littleton's growth. As the Front Range's first flour mill and one of the Denver & Rio Grande Western's first big shipping customers, it attracted jobs, settlers, and business investment, and by the late nineteenth century Rough and Ready flour had become a prominent national brand. Leased to a timber company in 1902, the mill shut down during the Great Depression, stood vacant until a fire destroyed it in 1959, and had already helped put Littleton on firm economic footing. The Denver & Rio Grande Western, which reached Littleton in 1871, grew with the town and helped make it one of Colorado's most prosperous agricultural regions. Its depot became one of the busiest on the line, with twenty-four trains arriving daily by the late 1880s and departing with freight cars full of local farmers' crops. For nearly a century the railroad served as Littleton's economic lifeline, and by the time the last freight train passed through in 1982, the community had long since shifted from a prosperous farming town to a prosperous suburb.