In the early 1900s Groner-Rowell Company operated a sawmill and a tile mill at the site. Logs were cut and stacked on the hills until the water level in the creeks were high enough to bring them down. A flume on McFee Creek was used to get logs down the creek to the Tualatin River. Mill hands and neighbors helped drive the logs and raft them to the sawmill. The sawmill closed around 1924.
The tile mill, known as Scholls Tile Company, used wood-fueled kilns to fire the red clay taken from the sites’s open pit clay mine into clay tiles. Each kiln could hold 12,000 4-inch tiles. In 1905, the company’s tile exhibit won a gold medal in competition with tiles from all over the world. Much of the tile was utilized by Washington County farmers for drainage purposes. The tile mill closed around 1976.
Credit: Scholls Ferry Tales
