Spanish Fork was settled in 1857, and its first flour mill was built by Archibald Gardner in 1858-59 using water from the Spanish Fork River, whose stream was enlarged to provide enough power. Constructed of rough lumber, the mill used large round granite stone burrs about four feet in diameter and two feet thick, with the lower stone stationary and the upper one rotating as wheat fed through a wooden chute into the center. As the wheat was ground, the husks became bran, the next finer product was shorts, and the finest became flour, while the burrs had to be dressed frequently to keep them working properly. Gardner sold the mill to the Spanish Fork Co-op in 1874, and soon after it was torn down and replaced by a larger two-story shiplap building with gables facing north and south and flumes that carried water to the mill wheel with a fall of twenty feet. Flour was produced there for fourteen years until April 15, 1888, when the mill burned to the ground, probably from spontaneous combustion. A four-story brick building was then begun at a cost of $40,000, equipped with new machinery in which large steel rollers replaced stone burrs. That new mill burned in December 1927 and was never rebuilt, and today nothing remains of the once busy whirring mill.