Elson-Magnolia Flour Mill

This complex in the center of Magnolia, Ohio, grew around a flour mill built about 1834 beside a mill race fed by the Sandy and Beaver Canal. The four-story heavy timber mill rests on a sandstone foundation and holds its milling equipment, grain bins and water wheel. Power changed over time from water to steam, gasoline and, in 1948, electricity. The district also contains the 1878 brick Italianate Elson House, lumber company buildings from 1905 to 1965, an 1878 horse barn, a circa 1870 railroad depot moved to the site in 1922, and the site of a former lumber mill. The mill was significant for its role in local settlement and early industry, and as a surviving nineteenth-century mill type. It is described as the last operating mill in Stark County, and the house is noted as an intact example of Italianate architecture. The period of significance runs from 1834 to 1950.