About 1908 some real estate enthusiasts formed a company and undertook to start things booming by contracting to buy for development purposes the Narup holdings between Millwood and Trent. They platted and offered for sale, the land, spent a vast sum of money in an irrigation enterprise which contemplated taking water from the river near Myrtle Point and running it by gravity up-hill to a point from whence it could be distributed on the land.

They also started to build a pickle factory, just east of where the Paper Mill now stands, and contracted for all the cucumbers their buyers of real estate could raise. The outcome was that the ditch was run down the river for about three-quarters of a mile, but never got up the bank to the land expected to be irrigated. The pickle factory was developed to the extent of a crude wall around a large hole which they called a basement. Several large wooden vats were placed in the so-called “factory”, and were actually filled with cucumbers which were never paid for, and stayed in “storage” until they rotted.

Seth Woodard, mid 1930's