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(Photograph by Steve C. Martens)
The Danish Mill in Town Square Park has become such a tourist attraction that it may be difficult to imagine that it was originally built as a working building to harness the wind for milling wheat. Jensen emigrated from Denmark in 1898 and built this mill on his homestead eleven miles north of Kenmare. The original capacity of the mill was two hundred sacks a day, and the mill, which operated until World War I, served farmers for many miles around. Purchased by the Kenmare Association of Commerce in 1958, restoration was completed in 1961, and in 1965 the mill was relocated to its present site. The cone-shaped mill is clad with wooden shingles and capped with a dome capable of rotating with the wind blades, which originally would have been covered with canvas sails. The finely crafted timber framing and millstones (two granite stones ten inches thick and forty inches in diameter) are visible on the interior. Painted in traditional red and white, the mill is of historic value as an example of a vernacular building type and immigrant technology.