Bend’s old mill district grew out of lumber companies that helped drive the town’s growth and supported many local families. The legacy of Mill B remains visible in the three iconic smokestacks that have defined Bend’s skyline since the 1920s and in the brick powerhouse, where huge boilers burned sawdust to create steam power for the mill, with excess electricity sold to Pacific Power & Light for use elsewhere in Bend. When the mills operated around the clock, soot from the powerhouse marked buildings in town, sawdust filled the air, and a piercing whistle signaled each shift change, while the noise inside the mill was so loud that workers developed an intricate sign language to communicate. Along the Deschutes River, or the pond as lumbermen once called it, giant pine trees were felled in the woods, hauled to town, floated downriver to the mill, processed into lumber, and shipped across the country, reportedly even to Cuba, China, and the Middle East. Over the lifetime of the mills, horses gave way to motorized vehicles and many techniques were modernized, but the basic process remained the same.