The Frankenmuth Woolen Mill: socks for the doughboys, still spinning

Tucked among the souvenir shops on Frankenmuth’s Main Street is a working factory. It has been turning wool into bedding since the year it opened — October 1894. Franz Ranke built the Frankenmuth Woolen Mill in the original building it still occupies. It carries the title of the oldest continuously operating woolen mill in Michigan. The machinery inside is genuinely old. Some of it is over a century in service. The team still feeds raw wool through it by hand.

In the beginning the mill ran on the wool from neighboring farms. It made the plain, useful things a farm community needed — socks, mitts, blankets, quilts, and the loose wool batting that went inside them. Then the country went to war. The U.S. government contracted the little Frankenmuth mill to turn out 66,000 pairs of wool socks. Those went to the American soldiers heading to Europe in World War I. That’s a lot of cold feet kept warm by a shop on a small-town main street.

It never stopped. The mill carries Michigan’s “Centennial Business” recognition for staying in operation more than a hundred years. And it’s grown into one of the larger makers of wool bedding in the country — pillows, mattress toppers, and comforters. All of them are stuffed with wool and made on the premises. Abby and Matt Curtis bought the company in 2000. They later picked up the land beneath it, which pins the historic mill in place for the long haul.

The busloads come to Frankenmuth for chicken dinners and Christmas ornaments. But there’s a quieter thing happening on Main Street. A 19th-century mill is carding and stuffing wool the way it has for well over a hundred years, soldiers’ socks and all.