Verso Paper Sartell Mill  The Sartell Paper Mill, officially the Verso Paper Sartell Mill, was a paper mill located in the city of Sartell in the U.S. state of Minnesota, operating from 1905 until a disastrous explosion in 2012. The original company, Watab Pulp and Paper, was conceived by a group of lumbermen from Wisconsin and Michigan and was formed on May 10, 1905 with a capitalization of $200,000. The stock shares were $100 each. It was the intent to build the mill at Sauk Rapids at the location of the Sauk Rapids Bridge, but the owners of the power rights were asking what was felt to be an exorbitant price. Watab Pulp and Paper went further upstream, to Sartell, and for a sum of $1.00 made an agreement with the owners of the existing saw mill to move it from the west side of the Mississippi River to a point just inside the village limits. The plant started operations with No. 1 paper machine in September, 1905. No. 2 paper machine was built in 1910. The company then produced newsprint until 1930, when the conversion to groundwood book and magazine papers began. Many changes have taken place since the days when log drives down the Mississippi River were common and the paper mill was experimenting using corn stalks as a raw material. During the 1930s, recycled magazines were a prime source of wood pulp. The waste magazines were brought by rail from Chicago in bales weighing up to 2,000 pounds. In the “sorting room,” paper clips and staples were removed. The waste was then sent to the cookers for deinking and bleaching. The conversion plant operated through the 1930s until the end of World War II. The war years brought other changes to the Sartell mill:  At the end of the war, the mill closed the finishing operation where paper was sheeted and cut to size. Since that time, all paper manufactured at Sartell has been shipped in roll form. Regis bought Watab Pulp and Paper and its properties in 1946. The transition was smooth with minor changes in mill management. Plant operations changed immensely. Until 1948, 100-inch wood was handled by hand. Large unloading crews handled the wood from railroad cars to a system of conveyors for building huge storage piles on the river’s edge. Over the years, many changes had taken place with the mill’s machinery:  Another operation that is no longer performed relates to storing groundwood.