Klepzig Mill

Hidden deep in the Ozark Mountains, the humble Klepzig Mill sits atop a canyon of rhyolite “shut-ins” carved by Rocky Creek. Constructed in 1929 by Walter Klepzig, a first-generation German. The mill was used as a sawmill and corn grinder, and eventually to generate electricity in the 1940s. Designed the “sawmill” house style, the structure was made with sawn boards instead of logs, secured to a native stone foundation.

Klepzig didn’t only sling sawn boards, but his own specially-bred cows and two new kinds of barbed wire. Klepzig was not only known as an innovator but also for giving back to the poor. He would use the mill to grind their corn. He gave extra boards to the surrounding people for coffin wood.

The property is a capsule example of a working early-20th-century Ozark farm. In addition to the mill, one can still see the full chicken coop. Foundations of a barn, farmhouse, spring house, smokehouse, and machine shed remain.