Cedarburg Wire and Nail Factory

The Cedarburg Wire and Nail Factory is a former sawmill, grist mill, factory, and hydroelectric plant on Cedar Creek located in the Town of Cedarburg Wisconsin in the United States. The stone mill was built in 1871 at a cost of $21,000 and was originally known as the Excelsior Mill.[1]

While operating under the Excelsior name the mill produced both flour and lumber.[1] The mill used the hydropower of the Columbia Mill just upstream by way of a flume. In 1885 a large fire consumed all the wooden buildings and gutted the stone main mill building causing the mill to shut down.[2] In 1890 it was bought by John Weber, who also owned the Columbia Mill just upstream.[1][3] The same year the Cedarburg Wire and Nail Company was formed and the mill was retooled to make drawn steel products.[1] At some point between the mills completion and 1910 the mill received its own dam and hydropower,[4] the dam was reconstructed in 1930, and a hydroelectric generation scheme was installed consisting of a vertical Francis turbine and a 125Kw generator to provide power to the factory.[5][6] The wire and nail factory and hydroelectric scheme continued to operate until the 1960s.

From the 1960s through the 1970s a sewer carried waste oil including PCBs from Mercury Marines Cedarburg factory to the Ruck Pond above the Wire and Nail Pond.[7][8] The contamination was also carried downstream to the Wire and Nail Pond where it settled into the sediment of the millpond.[8] In the 1990s the hydro electric plant was reactivated but was shut down a few years after due to reliability issues.[5] In 2017 the PCB contaminated sediment was dredged from the pond in a large effort to clean up Cedar Creek.