The falls were created about 14,000 years ago when the last glacial ice sheet redirected the flow of the river into the large looping bends of its present course. Fueled by water from the melting ice, the river exposed the underlying Sioux quartzite bedrock, the hard pinkish stone of the falls. The quartzite itself is about a billion and a half years old. It began as sediments deposited on the bottom of an ancient, shallow sea. The Queen Bee Mill was built in 1879 upon this bedrock. When completed it was seven stories - 104 feet - tall, 80 feet wide, and 100 feet long. Water from the Big Sioux River was diverted into a large turbine which generated 800 horsepower. The Queen Bee Mill, known as "the most ambitious attempt ever made to use waterpower west of the Mississippi River," was capable of producing 1,200 barrels of flour daily, and employed a hundred men.It is believed that there was some fraud and deceit involved in obtaining funding for the project; prior to a visit by potential investors, the developers arranged for a dam to be built upstream, and then blown up to create the illusion that the river could support such an ambitious project.The river did not have sufficient flow to support a mill the size that was proposed, and the business slowly foundered and went bankrupt by 1883. The main building changed hands several times, but remained in use as a mill until after World War I. It was used as a warehouse until fire destroyed the building in January, 1956, leaving behind only what we see on the site today.
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