History flows through Montauk State Park. That’s literal as the park in rural Dent County, Missouri holds the headwaters of the famed Current River. It also marks 100 years as a state park in 2026, a legacy filled with visitors who have come for its fishing, hiking, picnicking, camping and the park’s historic mill.
"We are sitting in the Montauk Mill, which is an old grain mill that was built in 1896," said Kristie Nelson, park naturalist. "It's the only structure of its era that's left standing in the park. But it's the real heart of the park. And it was the heart of the community that was once thriving here a long time ago even before the park was established. So, it carries a lot of stories to tell. And it's still part of our park's history and story today."
It’s believed the name Montauk has Native American ties. Before it was a park, it was a community established by the 1860s and was originally located a bit north from where it is today. As was common in those days, rural communities had mills so that locals could bring their wheat or corn to be ground.
"To feed your family and your kids, everyone needed to come to the mill to get that grain ground," Nelson said. "And so, it was one place where everyone would come on a regular basis. And that, kind of like a lot of mills in the Ozark region, they kind of fostered a community to come up around them as that central gathering place."
But as they do now, times changed. By the 1920s, Grover Brigman, the last miller at Montauk, sold the land for it to become one of Missouri’s first state parks.
"He really loved the job of being the miller here," Nelson said. "And he was very sad and perhaps reluctant to sell. But the timing was so good because at that time, transportation, technology had increased to the point where flour and wheat was being imported from Kansas, which of course is much more wheat-growing country than here. And so the demand for milling had been really declining at that time."
The mill was mentioned in newspaper articles at the time, but it doesn’t seem to be a major focus back then. After all, preserving the mill in that era would be similar to us saving a few-decades-old big-box store as a historic site. It wasn’t something unusual to them.
Instead, the main draw was the water, which was seen as perfect for a trout hatchery. That really came to life the next decade when that hatchery — and other parts of the park — were supported by the Civilian Conservations Corps. The New Deal era program established during the Great Depression to put men to work left fingerprints on Montauk that endure today.
"A lot of that infrastructure that's still here today, many of the cabins that our guests will reserve and stay in are C.C.C. structures," said Todd Wilkinson, the park's assistant superintendent. "We have the historic C.C.C. shelter, which is located in the old campground area of the park. It's another one of those legacies from it and even the mill itself. The dark color of the mill is produced by the application of carbolineum, and we know that the C.C.C. were the first ones to apply that as a way to preserve the mill. We still put carbolineum on the mill on a regular basis."
Visitors have frequented the park ever since. Along the way, the hatchery has endured, and once the mill became more of a novelty in the 1970s, interest in it grew, too.
"That was about the time that a lot of state parks and national parks were really moving towards living history," Wilkinson said. "I always refer to it as the Little House period, because Little House and The Waltons and other TV shows were really popular, and Americans wanted to go back and immerse themselves in living history."
As we celebrate Montauk’s centennial year, a key moment I want to circle in on is 2024. That November, a historic flood devastated the park.
As the water rose, employees did what they could to help prevent damage. They even frantically tried to save the fish from being swept away.
Much of the flooding happened overnight, but daylight made the devastation visible. The amount of sand and logs and debris was startling. The parking lots were largely gone. Fish, many still alive, were stuck in puddles until they could be rescued. The mill was damaged, too. Thankfully, and perhaps in part due to its long-ago construction method, it was able to be saved.
"When you look around at the mill, the original architecture of it is designed to be sturdy," Wilkinson said. "It's designed to be resilient because it's stacked lumber."
So much repair and cleanup had a deadline: March 1, 2025, the opening day of trout season. Their goal was to be back open. And they were.
"I think there were some, 'Oh my gosh, we made it,'" Nelson said.
Stories like that stand out to me when I consider the history at Montauk State Park. It’s about the natural beauty, but it’s also about the people who have worked so hard to share it with the world.
As Wilkinson put it, "I think we're guardians of a community's history."
