Near downtown in the Village of Dundee, a dam had been constructed on the River Raisin in the early 1800s. A building containing a grist mill was built on the east side of the river In 1910. It was converted to the Dundee Hydraulic Power Company but Detroit Edison soon came into the area and ran them out of business. Then in 1935, Henry Ford purchased the facility and began to use it for making manufactured goods.

After Ford died, Ford Motor Company decided to sell all these little factories scattered around the state. The property was eventually purchased in 1954 by Wolverine Manufacturing Company of Dearborn, Michigan.

In 1970, the building was sold to the Village of Dundee for $1.00 and it became the Old Mill Museum. Walter and Madelyn (Hanson) Berns were quite active working with this volunteer organization.

Part of the facility became the Old Mill Hall Banquet Room and the Heiden Family Reunion was held there on September 3, 1995 and August 27, 2000.

Even though it was no yet a widely used concept, Wolverine was an early entry into the recycling arena. At the Old Mill site, they took bales of used or outdated envelopes and other paper products and turned them into gasket material for the auto industry. My father, Art Heiden worked there briefly and my uncle, William Frank Heiden (right) worked there for several years.

During two summer college vacations and one Christmas break in the late 1960s, I worked at Wolverine with my uncle and 4 or 5 other employees. One summer I worked the 3:30 pm to midnight shift and really liked it...for one summer anyway. The UAW wages were very nice compared to the money I earned another summer working 70 hours per week at the Texaco gas station in town.