In the following year Clark, together with William Pool of Greenbush purchased both the privilege and the house, converting the log structure into a sawmill. The mill dam was built on the south one-half of section one, forming what would become the largest mill pond in the Kettles. Remotely situated as it was, Clark's sawing business depended heavily on the nearby Greenbush area. The wilderness crossroads soon became known as Clark's Mill, and for the next six years it remained just that.

In 1856, after being the subject of rumor mad speculation for years, the route for the Sheboygan-Mississippi Railroad was finally confirmed. Heading northwesterly from Plymouth, the railroad would skirt the southern edges of Sheboygan Marsh as it turned towards Fond du Lac. Clark's Mill lay directly in it's path. With the railroad's announcement, a swarm of eastern capitalists and speculators descended the area. Edward Appleton, contractor of the railroad, in company with other investors, acquired the north-east quarter of section one, where they platted a village. The proposed settlement was named by Appleton, who used his mother's name, prefixing it with the town "glen" in recognition of the site's river valley setting. Within a few years, the hyphen was discarded, the village becoming known simply as Glenbeulah

Joseph Swift, former New England, clipper-ship captain, in company with son-in-laws James Dillingham and Edwin Slade formed a corporation to handle the milling and mercantile business of the projected town. With the death of area pioneer, Hazael Clark in January of 1856, Dillingham purchased the sawmill and its water rights from Clark's widow, Thelotia. After enlarging the dam and remodeling the sawmill, the corporation erected a flour mill, placing it down river from the older mill installation. The sawmill was operated by Dillingham for the next twenty-seven years. In 1884, with the departure of the wooden ware company from Glenbeulah, the old mill returned to the Clark family, when it was purchased by Rabbi Vandalstyne, former son-in-law of Hazael Clark.

Grading work for the railroad was completed between Glenbeulah and Sheboygan in 1859. At the southeast edge of the village a group of thatched roof cabins were built to house the project's Irish labor force. Known as Moran's Patch, the camp, including wives and children would remain there well beyond the next decade. On March 28th, 1860, the first train puffed into Glenbeulah from the east, signifying the railroad's first step in its trek to the Mississippi River. Amid much celebrating, a number of area residents boarded the train for its return trip to Sheboygan, many experiencing the first railroad journey of their lives.

Festivities reached a high point when the evening train arrived in the village. The Glenbeulah depot was transformed into a reception hall and dining room while the spacious engine house became a ballroom where couples waltzed into the early morning hours.

Westward progress of the railway now remained at a standstill for the next nine years while railroad owners and Fond du Lac taxpayers debated the cost shares of extending the line into the county. While they wrangled, Glenbeulah remained the western terminus of the Sheboygan and Mississippi. Twice daily the twenty-two ton locomotives, Cape Cod and Winnebago pulled their three or four cars into town and just as often they were re-positioned on the turntable for the return trip to Sheboygan. The dual drive-wheeled steamers were fueled with cord wood, which farmers in search of additional income, cut and stacked along the right-of-way. For a fare of two dollars, west-bound travelers transferred to the Scott and Company stage, which teamster James Kendall drove to Fond du Lac daily.

What the plank road had often done for its neighbor to the southwest, a decade earlier, the railroad now bestowed on Glenbeulah. In its edition of March 10, 1866, The Evergreen City Times presented the following statistics for the bustling village: one wooden ware factory, one sawmill, one flour mill, three blacksmith shops, two harness shops, one wagon shop, two cobblers, one tin shop, one tailor, one cabinet shop, one butcher, three general stores, three hotels, one grain elevator, as well as an undetermined number of saloons. Besides all this, its population was rapidly approaching four hundred souls.

Wheat growing was the major industry of the region and harvest time in the 1860's was marked by lines of ox-drawn wagons waiting to unload at the flour mill. During these periods, head miller, Herman Schnelby operated twenty-four hours a day, shutting down only for maintenance or when the "head" drew down too far to power the water wheel. Since farmers of the locality were producing more wheat than was needed by the community, much of the flour produced at the mill was shipped to eastern markets. Sealed in wooden barrels coopered in Glenbeulah, the flour was moved by rail to Sheboygan, where it was loaded aboard Steam ships and sailing vessels bound for Lake Erie.

In 1863, the Dillingham and Gordon Company opened a wooden ware factory in the village, Employing sixty workers, it made barrels, cheese and butter boxes as well as wagon wheel assemblies. These products were also slipped to the eastern seaboard and also (according to the company's salesmen) "anywhere in the western frontier".

Construction of the railroad resumed in 1869, reaching Fond du Lac the same year. Losing its status as a rail terminal Glenbeulah now became just another stop on the line. That same year a major fire broke out in the village, destroying much of the business district between Main and Otis streets. The booming economy enjoyed by the community since 1860, now began to slow. A north-south railway linking Milwaukee and Green Bay was built in the region in 1872, passing through the glacial valley a few miles east of Glen. When a dispute arose with the local railroad over rising freight costs, village residents hauled their shipments by wagon to Plymouth, where they placed them on the Milwaukee Line. Already beset by difficulty, Glenbeulah's economy received its worst set-beck, when in 1884, the Dillingham Company moved from the village. Citing a shortage of timber and a need for better transportation facilities, the sixty worker operation re-located in Sheboygan.

The decline of wheat raising in the eighties soon had its effect on the milling and elevator interests of the community. No longer did wagons line the streets near the mill, nor did carloads of flour depart for eastern cities. Lessening soil fertility, the plague of the chinch bug, and the increasing dominance of the flour industry by big milling interests shifted the local mills use to the production of animal feed. That dwindled after World War 1, when the water-powered facility faced competition from modern gasoline and electric-powered mills. In the "forties" the old structure was stripped of its milling machinery for use in the nation's war effort. Designated a county landmark in 1981, the hundred and thirty-six year old building serves as a residence today. With its Leffel turbine still in place, it remains one of the two water-powered mill structures in the Kettle Moraine.

Mr. Vandalstyne ran the sawmill until the turn of the century before passing its ownership on to Ernst Baumann. By now the increasing scarcity of nearby timber had considerably diminished its use. In 1910 the old building was torn down and the west side dam was removed from the Mullet.

The railroad which played such a great role in the origin of Glenbeulah never did get to the Mississippi. After reaching Fond du Lac in 1869, it was extended to Princeton in 1872. By then, changing transportation patterns in the state had lessened the lines importance and would end its western advance.

Despite complaints of excessive freight charges, the old railway provided the citizens of the village with a direct link to the outside world for eighty ears. One notable exception occurred after the blizzard of "81" when twenty-foot drifts blocked the tracks and service didn't resume until after the spring thaw. In times of need, the Sheboygan and Mississippi had been a reassuring friend. As on September night in 1862, when a "steamed up" locomotive with its train of cars waited on a Glenbeulah siding, ready to speed the villages populace to safety if a reported Indian uprising materialized.

In 1922 the old turntable was removed from its place in the village center. Decked in its place that winter were thousands of hard wood logs, harvested in the Long Lake and Greenbush regions of the Kettle Moraine. Hauled across the glacial terrain on horse-drawn sleighs, many of the oak and maple "sticks" were three to four feet in diameter. Years later, "old-timers" would still tell of the thrilling sight of galloping horses, straining on the icy downgrades in an effort to stay ahead of the careening, pyramidal loads. That following summer five hundred carloads of logs from the Kettle Moraine, left Glen on east-bound trains, headed for Green Bay sawmills.

Use of the auto and truck had overtaken that of the railroad by 1940, resulting, that year in the curtailment of passenger service on the line. A half-dozen years later, its freight-hauling was also discontinued. In the few remaining years of its existence, the railway was used solely to transport sand and gravel from the area's eskers and kettles. Each day train-loads of glacial till headed east to be used as ballast along the extensive Chicago and Northwestern tracks. East of the village, whole moraines disappeared before the onslaught of the power shovel. By 1950, all traffic ceased on the former Sheboygan to Mississippi line, and today only brush-covered gradings remain to mark its onetime presence.

Although the foresight and investments of Easterners like Appleton, Swift and Dillingham, provided the impetus for Glenbeulah's establishment, neither can the contribution of hard working Irish and German immigrants be ignored. Frederic Ladenberger arrived in the settlement in 1857 and became its first blacksmith. After patenting a wagon brake in 1865, he managed the operation of a successful wagon making business for many years. Danial Sullivan came to town in 1858 to set up shop as the second village "smith". Leaving for the army at the outbreak of the Civil War, he was killed while a member of the Fourth Wisconsin Regiment. During the heyday of the local milling industry, millers Michael Metzger and Herman Schnelby were reputed to be producers of the whitest, finest flower in the region. Sixteen year-old Jerry Donohue served as Glenbeulah's station agent in 1861. Following a meteoric rise in the rail industry, he became a superintendent of the Chicago Northwestern at the age of thirty-three.

One of the more striking scenes in the Kettle Moraine may be viewed from a hilltop overlooking the former mill settlement. Situated two hundred feet above the Mullet and once known as Walnut Grove, it provides a burial place for many of the areas founders and builders. Here as recorded on marble and granite, lie pioneer Clark with his wife Thelotia, Captain Swift and wife Mary, the Baumanns, Metzgers and Ladenbergers. All came to this river valley well over a century ago, to make their mark. Their dreams for an industrial metropolis were never realized. Yet when one looks on the peaceful village below end on to the relatively untouched countryside, perhaps it was all meant for the best.