The Brightest City South of St. Louis

The name of the town was changed to Electric Mills because of the uniqueness of this new lumber manufacturing process. The slabs, sawdust, planning mill chips and other waste had to be disposed of, so the production engineers decided to fire a boiler with them to produce steam to power the electrical generators.

The electric generating plant ran continuously, the electricity was free to the employees, so no one ever bothered to turn off a light. One news correspondent wrote that EM was the brightest city south of Saint Louis.