These pages contain pictures and stories of Mineral Point’s early commercial history and tell of men and women who built businesses along Mineral Point Creek and Old Darlington Road. In 1845, Matilda Hood built the first gristmill in Mineral Point using the creek water to power the mill stones. In 1909, Charlie Curtis started a successful cement block company along Darlington Road. That block plant was destroyed by a mysterious dynamite explosion in 1921. These businesses and others in the Darlington Road valley helped create a commercial and industrial city that became the center of southwest Wisconsin in the 1800s, “the city where Wisconsin began.”