Shawnee Milling history

J. Lloyd and Frances Ford with their first child, John Lloyd Ford Jr., who was born in March 1909.

Growing fast, Shawnee Milling Company in 1910.

Shawnee’s Best Flour was called Climax in 1912.

Expanding Shawnee Milling Company in 1917.

Okeene Milling Company as it appeared in 1926.

As one of sixty-four Oklahoma milling establishments in 1932, the company employed thirty-two workers, of whom two were women.

Newspaper advertisement J. Lloyd Ford placed on June 6, 1935, showing new Shawnee Milling Company plant.

Shawnee (Oklahoma) News-Star, 22 October 1946.

Williams, formerly of Lonesome Dove, TX, worked for the company for 43 years before retiring in 1950.

Shawnee Mills elevator in midst of maintenance, 1954(67.0560, Oklahoma Historical Society Photograph Collection, OHS).

Full-page advertisement in May 1957 was placed in observance of Oklahoma’s semi-centennial and Shawnee Milling Company’s 51st year in business.

By 1978 the mill produced daily six thousand hundredweights (more than 300 tons) of flour, twenty-five hundred hundredweights (approximately 140 tons) of cornmeal, and 600 tons of feed.

William Leslie Ford, third president of Shawnee Milling Company in 1979 at the age of 36.

Shawnee Milling Company complex at the company’s 75th anniversary in 1981.

Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City), 17 July 1986.

He was named 1992 "Miller of the Year" by the national Association of Operative Millers.

Paul F. Lambert et al., Historic Oklahoma: An Illustrated History (Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Heritage Association, 2000).

Okeene Milling Company in 2005.

Shawnee Milling Company complex at the company’s centennial in April 2006.