Sacramento pioneer John Sutter is credited with building the first flour mill in the Sacramento area in 1840. Because of the demand by the thousands of gold seekers flooding the tent city of Sacramento and the difficulty in obtaining supplies, the price of flour soared to $26 a barrel by the end of 1848. By 1852 there were six mills operating in and around Sacramento and they all utilized the transportation the Sacramento River provided to ship their flour to the gold fields and instant communities that sprang up around them. The Sacramento Valley summers dried the wheat enough for it to easily ship to foreign markets intact. When it began in 1853, the Phoenix Flouring Mill ground grain to feed livestock. By 1860 the mill was producing 20,000 bushels of wheat ground to flour by steam power. The business changed hands in 1868, and after surviving a fire in 1872 that necessitated building a new brick storehouse, the mill changed hands one again in 1881. The new owners rebuilt in 1885 after another fire and incorporated in 1891. Phoenix sold out to the Globe Milling Co. (after refusing earlier to join the Sperry Flour Combine) a few years before Globe was dissolved by the state in 1928.
