Christian Deardorff (1781-1851) and his brother-in-law Jesse Slingluff (1775-1836) platted and founded Dover and built the area's first gristmill on Sugar Creek. After the Ohio and Erie Canal reached Dover, Deardorff successfully lobbied to make the town a toll stop and to secure water power for his mill. A dam on Sugar Creek obstructed the mill there, so he obtained access to the canal near Tuscarawas Avenue and built another mill, later named the Cascade Mill by the Hardesty brothers after they purchased it in 1872. The Hardestys, from Carroll County, came to Dover in the 1860s and began operating a large mill on the Calico Ditch near the foot of 2nd Street, and the Dover Milling Company bought the last Hardesty-owned mill in 1951. In antebellum Ohio, canals made it faster and cheaper for farmers and others to bring goods to market and for manufacturers elsewhere to send goods to Ohioans. Dover, platted in 1807, grew rapidly after the Ohio and Erie Canal arrived in 1830, and the canal spurred the development of local industry, including milling and iron smelting. A blast furnace on West 3rd Street operated under various owners until it closed in the late 1920s, and later industries in Dover included steel rolling mills and Reeves Manufacturing Company's galvanizing plant.