The ruin is part of a hatchery raceway built by Lester Klemme, owner and operator of Old Mill Lodge, a modest resort and recreation business. The raceway held and grew small fish and provided minnows for the lodge's guests to use as bait while fishing for smallmouth bass and other fish in the millpond and nearby streams. Cool water from this spring kept the minnows healthy and active. The millpond had gained a reputation among anglers long before the hatchery was built, and in 1915 A.W. Schwieder wrote of a fishing encounter with the Mischke family, owners of the mill, recalling that the miller and his sister, typical Ozarkians, hardly stirred from the shaded doorway or window of the mill as they watched the catch being windlassed in and loaded into a purposely lengthened net.