On Oct. 3, 1954, brazen burglars with experience in high-explosives struck three important businesses in Ocheyedan, Iowa, making away with cash and checks from one, cash only from another, and nothing at all from the third.
The worst scene was at the Farmers Co-operative Elevator Association facility where Tillotson Construction Co. built the single-leg, 267,413-bushel concrete elevator in 1950.
“The burglars used either dynamite or nitroglycerine to blast open the safe door at the elevator company,” the Osceola County sheriff told The Sioux City Journal. The haul netted $600 in cash and $3,000 in checks. Authorities throughout Iowa were put on watch for check-passing.
The Sinclair station was hit and lost $136 in cash.
Burglars also entered Botsford Lumber Co. but no loss was discovered.
Photo via Facebook’s Ocheyedan: A Place We Call Home
It seems that safecrackers enjoyed a bounty year in 1954. Doc Nebergall, chief of the Iowa bureau of investigation, counted 146 such burglaries.
“I don’t know why safe jobs have increased so much in this state,” Nebergall told The Sioux City Journal the following January. “Up to a few years ago Iowa had gone seven years without a safe cracking. Then all of a sudden we started having a flock of them and they’ve been continuing ever since.”
Deserted at night, and with cash on hand to pay for grain deliveries, elevators were prime sites for burglaries. Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators records a 1932 strike at Exeter, Nebr., where two men stole a radio and certain other articles valued at $50.
In the Ocheyedan elevator’s case, it should have been enough for the operators to guard against grain-dust explosions up high. Being struck by a ground-level blast was a dirty piece of business.
At one of the highest points in Iowa, a Tillotson elevator faced down its peers.
Ocheyedan (pronounced oh-CHEED-an) is today a town of 421 residents in Osceola County, northwest Iowa. It is situated near the Ocheyedan Mound, which rises 170 feet above the surrounding plain.
Robert K. Reiste, publisher of the Ocheyedan Press, once wrote that people thought the Mound was an Indian burial grounds until geologists determined it’s a “kame.” Eskers and kames are somewhat similar glacial deposits. This ancient kame is composed of sand, gravel, and boulders.
“Ocheyedan Mound is one of the most beautiful hills in the northwest part of the state, and its outline can be seen for miles in all directions,” Reiste wrote in 1951. He gave the town’s population as 712 residents and pinned the Mound’s elevation at 1,675 feet above sea level.
Reiste makes no mention that the Mound first got a run for its money the year before his report appeared. Tillotson Construction Co. came to town in 1950 and reached towards the heavens with a single-leg grain elevator rated at 267,413 bushels of capacity.
It was one of three Iowa jobs completed around the same time and using the same plan with eight tanks each measuring 18 feet in diameter. The Ocheyedan variation was to increase the height of the drawform walls from 115 to 120 feet. With a cupola measuring 23 x 60 x 40 feet, the pristine grain house stood pretty much head to head with the Mound a couple of miles away.
Construction work had started early in the summer of 1950. The Globe, of Worthington, Minn., reported the Ocheyedan Co-operative Elevator Association would hold its annual meeting on June 27. Don Edison of the Iowa Farmers Grain Dealers Association was guest speaker. Edison traveled around Iowa for such occasions. In 1951, the Des Moines Register even reported on his goodwill trip to Mexico, where he learned about the work of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers and about the Rockefeller Foundation’s support of President Truman’s “Point Four” foreign-policy program of sharing scientific knowledge, including agricultural practices.
Detail view of Ocheyedan Farmers Co-operative elevator in 1950
The Globe’s report on elevator construction continued:
“Meanwhile, excavation work is proceeding and form building is under way for the new 250,000-bushel concrete elevator now being put up by the co-operative, to be completed in early September. Webb Welty, Pond Creek, Okla., is superintending operations for the Tillotson Construction company, Omaha, contractors.”
Pond Creek was a Tillotson job in 1946, and we surmise that Webb Welty joined the company then. In its Pond Creek news summary, The Medford Patriot Star and Grant County Journal ran the following item on Sept. 26, 1946:
We lack any record of an elevator at Elkhart, Texas, but Tillotson also built at Elkhart, Kan. in 1946.
Back in Ocheyedan, The Globe published a follow-up report on Aug. 8:
“Construction of the eight cylindrical tanks of the new 250,000-bushel concrete elevator of the Farmers Co-operative Elevator company was completed Saturday noon. The crew, directed by Webb Welty, foreman, is now removing the slip form which rode the job from the foundation to the full height of the tanks, 120 feet above grade. Work was carried [out] on a 24-hour daily schedule for approximately two weeks. In the course of another 10 days, work will begin on the head house which will tower another 40 feet above the bins. Manager Ernest Wellhausen of the elevator co-operative said it is expected the plant will be in shape to receive its first grain the latter part of September.”
“I think my Uncle Wade Arend helped build it as a young man,” Karl Arend wrote on the Facebook page Ocheyedan: A Place We Call Home. “Heard stories about the ride up and down on the cable pulleys.”
Hometown newspapers make it easy to follow Wade after his elevator work. With Frederick Glade and William Weaver, he was one of three Ocheyedan lads who attended South Dakota State, and he was in Army ROTC. He became a high school teacher in Lime Springs, Iowa until being called to active duty at Fort Benning, Ga. After service with the Army Engineers, where he was a lieutenant, he returned to Brookings, S.D. for six weeks at the college. Then he went off to Fairbanks, Ak. and taught science at the junior high school level. Receiving a National Science Foundation scholarship for graduate study, he had decided to attend Michigan State University.
We leave off Wade’s story at that point to return to Ocheyedan.
The concrete elevator went up between two wood elevators already standing in Ocheyedan.
The elevator at left in the aerial photo (top of post) wears the co-op’s label. The other elevator, seen at right in the same photo, is labeled E.A. Brown Co. (Inset views of both elevators are embedded in the body of this post.) Edward A. Brown was an entrepreneur who owned dozens of elevators in Minnesota, South Dakota, and Iowa.
Here are some basic specifications of Tillotson’s Ocheyedan elevator:
2,255 cubic yards of reinforced concrete
49.6 cubic yards plain concrete for hoppers
115.34 tons of reinforcing steel
60 x 73.5-foot slab 24 inches thick and 4,101 square feet
13,635 tons gross weight loaded
23 x 60 x 40-foot cupola
pulley centers 165.5 feet apart
120-foot drawform walls
One source says a dedication ceremony was held Oct. 5, 1950, although further details are unavailable. For additional information and construction-progress photos from Ocheyedan, visit the Towns and Nature blog for the post “Ocheyedan, IA: Early Slip Form Grain Elevator with Construction Photos.”
When Harper and Bowers wanted to expand their grain operation in Estill, S.C., they went with Midwestern expertise. Stiles Harper and Grover Bowers were on the cotton side of things upon founding their company in 1947 but branched out in the early 1950s as South Carolina farmers found success with double cropping. Grain followed by soybeans was a development that sent the producers looking for sufficient storage and handling.
To foster this new practice, Harper and Bowers sponsored a soybean-growing contest. The winners for the 1953 crop were a father-son team, R.C. and Bobby Deloach, the boy being a 4-H club member,. They harvested 36 bushels per acre. Deemed a success, the contest was renewed for 1954.
Stiles Harper was an Estill native who attended the University of South Carolina. He was 37 years old when he cofounded Harper and Bowers, Inc. Besides leading efforts in soybean processing by cofounding Southern Soya Corp., he also advocated for pine tree plantations and was named South Carolina Tree Farmer of the Year in 1977.
Grover Bowers, Jr. was a University of South Carolina graduate who fought with the Marines in the Pacific Theater during World War Two, achieving the rank of captain. He served one term in the South Carolina senate and in 1978 received the Order of the Palmetto, the state’s highest civilian honor.
Burrell elevator, 1951
The first Harper and Bowers elevator, with 125,000-bushels capacity, was built in 1951 by Thomas L. Burrell, Inc. of Indianapolis. Then the partners commissioned Tillotson Construction Co. of Omaha to put up a 225,000-bushel storage annex in 1952.
The next year, Tillotson was back to build a companion elevator, a 334,000-bushel twin-leg job with a striking curved cupola that added 50 additional feet to the Lowcountry skyline. The expansion enabled Harper and Bowers to accommodate the needs of area farmers, a point that’s elaborated in an article from The Press and Standard on Oct. 15, 1953:
A 1954 news report indicated Harper and Bowers planned a storage annex to join the Tillotson elevator, further increasing capacity at Estill to 1 million bushels.
Kristen visited the location in 2014 and took the pictures seen with post.
Key specifications on the two Tillotson jobs are listed here:
225,000-bushel annex in 1952:
9 tanks measuring 18 feet in diameter and reaching 108.5 feet in height.
Full basement
Upper run measuring 14.0 x 93.0 feet
Belt conveyors, 20-inch belt at bottom and 24-inch belt at top
13 internal bins
1,509 tons of reinforced-concrete, 25 more tons for hoppers
75.27 tons of steel
Slab 50 x 78.5 feet, 21 inches thick
9,582 tons gross weight loaded
334,000-bushel twin-leg elevator in 1953
10 tanks measuring 18 feet in diameter and rising 120 feet
21 bins
2,620 tons of reinforced concrete, 63 more tons for hoppers
Having come straight from the fields, trucks were lined up for half a block, and sight of them and the brand-new gleaming white grain-storage tanks built for Harper and Bowers made J.M. Eleazer catch his breath.
“They shot 107 feet into the sky!” Eleazer, the Clemson University extension information specialist, wrote in his statewide South Carolina newspaper column. “It looked like we were in the Mid-west.”
The Hampton County extension agent was guiding Eleazer around the town of Estill in early June of 1952.
Burrell elevator of 1951
“And the way oats and lupine seed were pouring in there,” Eleazer continued, “I didn’t doubt that they would be filled.” (Lupines were grown as a cover crop in that part of South Carolina about 50 miles north of Savannah, Ga.
Tillotson Construction Co. had just finished a 225,000-bushel storage annex to go with the 125,000-bushel elevator built in 1951 by Thomas L. Burrell, Inc. of Indianapolis.
The nine tanks of the new storage annex each measured 18 feet in diameter and reached 108.5 feet in height.
Eleazer’s rhapsody continued:
“The whole vast outfit is practically a push-button arrangement. The grain comes in big loads in bulk. A gate is opened in the back and a hoist raises the front of the vehicle so the grain pours out the back. It falls through a grating into a pit where conveyers get it and take it to the top of the elevators. There it runs through a dryer, cleaner, and grader and right on into the proper storage bin.
J.M. Eleazer
“Some of the grain and lupine seed was being sold, some was going into the government loan, and some was being stored for the farmers. Each lot was sampled, graded, tested, cleaned and dried, and a simple punching of buttons told it where to go.
“Such safe storage brings grain, corn, and legume seeds into the full stature of dependable money crops. For, handled in that manner, they become about as bankable a commodity as our friend cotton.”
Eleazer ranked Estill as a leader and an example in South Carolina, where grain-producing areas …
” … had gone about as far as they can in diversifying with such crops until suitable storage and marketing arrangements can be made … there are many farming sections ripe for just such a service now. And a facility like that stimulates such crops a lot. For when a man tastes of that service he has more confidence in those crops as sources of cash.
“You really feel like you are out in the grain belt when you stand and look up to those many great concrete towers.”
By Oct. 30, 1953, Tillotson Construction completed a brand-new twin-leg elevator of 334,000 bushels capacity at Estill, It had ten tanks measuring 18 feet and reaching 120 feet in height.
Eleazer provided an update:
“They tell me that vast facility at Estill has had to turn away grain and seeds seeking storage all along. It stays loaded to the gills.”
Eleazer left out an important detail after his site visit. Perhaps he hadn’t been informed, or perhaps he wanted to avoid the subject.
In 2014, our own Kristen visited Estill for Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators. She reported: “The histories neglect one of the Estill elevator’s darker episodes. In the ’40s and ’50s, construction safety was not mandated as it is now. In one of the accidents that was all too common for elevator construction, Wayne Eugene Baker lost his life in a fall while working on the storage addition, or annex, built in 1952. For all of the heartache, Wayne helped build a thing of beauty that sustained its neighborhood for many years and still brings economic benefit to its region.”
A scaffold broke! It’s unthinkable! How could that have happened? A young man lost his life in a preventable accident. Today, there would likely be criminal charges against the company. But back then, it was every man for himself; the mind’s eye didn’t hold even a glimmer of greater precautions.
One wonders if Tillotson Construction made a financial accommodation with the young man’s family. We have no record of that.
Among the still images isolated by Mindi Adkins from an archival home-movie is the selection of on-the job scenes we present in this post.
Mindi’s grandfather, Ben E. Schmidt, worked for Tillotson Construction Co. on thirteen elevator jobs in six states, starting in his hometown of Montezuma, Kan. That was in 1948. Ben and some of his brothers, including Fred Schmidt who operated the movie camera, stayed with the company for a couple of years. We know two of the subsequent destinations were Montevideo, Minn. and Alta, Iowa, as described in previous posts.
Mindi says the movie film is likely from Alta in 1950. Ben’s wife Ruth became pregnant during that job, so they went back to Montezuma to have the baby. In time, the baby, Pearl, grew up and had her own baby, Mindi.
Among the figures appearing in these scenes, Mindi says she’s pretty sure the blue-clad one with his back to the camera in the topmost image is Ben’s brother-in-law Jake Unruh.
Jake Michael Unruh was born in Montezuma, Kan. in 1919. He married Alda Schmidt in 1948. After elevator work, he had a career as a farmer, dairyman, and custom-harvester.
His brother-in-law Ben owned a custom-harvesting operation.
It’s hard to guess the nature of the tasks being done in these images. Suffice it to say everything appears to be well-organized. We note the crew’s rugged garb and the abundance of tools and work stations.
One image includes two late-model General Motors cars–probably Chevrolets. Do they belong to elevator crew members?
Some images show work being done on a frame structure instead of anything to do with the wooden formwork for cylindrical elevator storage tanks. If this work was on an office, mill, or other grain storage building, we don’t see notes in the construction record to describe it.
Even if some imagination is required in reconstituting the activities caught in progress, these rare color images are a valuable resource for their depictions of job layout, tools and methods, and teamwork.
We’re grateful to Mindi for sharing them.
For her part, Mindi says, “I’m hoping someone reading the blog recognizes someone from the video.”
Pages 7 and 7A of the Tillotson Construction Co. record document the stretch from late-1951 to 1953 when the company reached deep into the Southeast as a builder of reinforced-concrete grain-storage buildings, completing main-house elevators and/or storage annexes at sixteen locations.
The Omaha company led by Reginald O. Tillotson and Mary V. Tillotson produced 3,186,820 bushels of new capacity in this period. Jobs were in ten states: Nebraska (2), Kansas (1), Colorado (1), South Dakota (1), Iowa (2), Illinois (1), Oklahoma (3), Texas (1), South Carolina (3), and Georgia (1).
Here’s the complete list of the sixteen locations: York and Fairfield, Nebr.; Estill (2) and Millet Ville, S.C; Draper, S.D.; Manson and Ralston, Iowa; Conlen, Tex.; Meno, Cherokee, and Helena, Okla.; Columbia, Ill.; Jamestown, Kan.; and Flagler, Colo.
At Helena, as seen at the top of this post, Tillotson had built the 100,000-bushel main house with the curved cupola in 1949 and added 200,000 bushels of storage in 1953. Provenance of the second elevator is unknown.
The smallest commission was a curious 18,600-bushel elevator at Millet Ville, S.C. in 1952.
Called “Millet” today, Millet Ville was an unincorporated area on the Savannah River about 40 miles from Augusta, Ga. The Atlantic Coast Line served this Lowcountry area. We are unable to learn anything more about the project, which is an outlier in every sense.
Notes in the record show Millet Ville with five bins measuring 10 feet in diameter and reaching 50 feet in height. There were eight internal bins and a 300-bushel-per-hour leg.
The facility was built without a driveway.
The Millet Ville cupola was of frame construction, and the manlift was hand-operated.
Getting started in FlaglerFrom the top in FlaglerFinishing up in Flagler
Our Tillotson uncles worked on the Flagler job in 1953 and took some valuable pictures, starting with construction of the first formwork next-door to the old wood elevator.
Estill, S.C.Draper, S.D.
The elevator at Estill, S.C. was for Harper and Bowers, an outfit with 715,000 bushels of storage. It came at a time when grain production was expanding in the Palmetto State and Midwestern expertise was needed for storage.
Following the plan first used at Cedar Bluffs, Nebr., Tillotson also built a 130,000-bushel elevator on the old Macon Road at Orchard Hill, Ga.
A plaque established by the Georgia Historical Society gives the date as 1954, but our record differs on that point. A search shows the elevator remains standing but is not in operation today.
Meno, Okla. with 1953 Tillotson elevator at rightMeno, Okla. with 1953 Tillotson elevator on right
The largest commission was the 537,500-bushel storage annex at another dot on the map, Ralston, Iowa.
Meno, Okla. is yet another dot on the map–but one we visited in 2018. The photos from that visit show two elevators. We believe Tillotson built both of them, but we only have the record of the smaller one–152,000 bushels–seen at the right in the above photos. Concrete-pouring started on Dec. 26, 1952 and the job was finished by late-March of 1953.
After Ben E. Schmidt crewed on the 1948 Tillotson Construction Co. job in Montezuma, Kan., he helped to build a dozen more elevators in six other states.
He wasn’t the only member of the Schmidt family riding the formwork.
“I don’t know for sure how many of the brothers worked on elevators, but I know a brother-in-law, Jake Unruh, was also on this job,” says Mindi Adkins, granddaughter of Ben E. Schmidt.
Mindi–who contributed the home-movie captures with this post–absorbed the family lore of elevator construction days.
She thinks the job seen in this post is Tillotson’s 1950 elevator in Alta, Iowa. Capacity was 246,070 bushels. There were eight tanks measuring 18 feet in diameter and reaching 115 feet in height. More specific details are found on page 5 of the Tillotson construction record.
The image at the head of this post shows formwork as the crew is nearly ready to top-out the cupola.
The overalls-clad figure on the catwalk is Mindi’s grandfather Ben, doing the task of concrete-finishing.
The home-movie film was shot by Mindi’s great-uncle Fred Schmidt.
Fred’s color movie is a valuable survivor of the boom period of concrete-elevator construction. His foresight in making the movie benefits Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators today, thanks to Mindi’s initiative to isolate these images.
In a tip-of-the-iceberg moment, Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators has received a fresh take on the Montevideo, Minn. elevator built in 1949 by Tillotson Construction Co., and it opens a door on the personal lives of crew members.
Mindi Adkins stopped by Montevideo en route from South Dakota and took pictures of the elevator.
“My grandpa Ben Schmidt helped build that elevator and many others,” Mindi explains.
Montevideo happens to be Tillotson’s “cover girl” elevator featured in the January 1950 issue of Farmers Elevator Guide. The story behind the story is that six unions filed a strike notice as the job got going the previous summer. One way or other, work was completed in the autumn and Farmers Equity Elevator Co. dedicated their new grain house on Dec. 30, 1949.
Mindi’s revelation has an additional personal element, as her contribution also includes postcards to her grandparents. One is addressed to them at Watson’s Cabins in Montevideo. The other is general delivery.
Ruth Toews Schmidt was from Montezuma, Kan. (site of another Tillotson elevator). She and Ben E. Schmidt married on May 20, 1945. They soon went to Colorado Springs, where Ben was assigned to a Civilian Public Service camp, serving two years. He came home and worked on Tillotson’s 1948 Montezuma elevator.
“My grandma Ruth told me that when they were building the Montezuma elevator, Ben jumped the gap between the two elevators at the top!” Mindi says. “I wish I knew how many feet it is, but Ruth didn’t approve!”
Afterwards, the couple went on the circuit of elevator jobs.
Mindi elaborates on the question of elevator construction:
“I did get some information from Grandma. She told me all the elevators she remembered that Grandpa worked on–approximately 13 in seven different states. Then several years ago, my grandpa’s brother Lincoln, who also worked on elevators, told me the Tillotson name.”
After working in Montevideo, Ben was part of Tillotson’s crew at Alta, Iowa in 1950. Ruth became pregnant during that time.
“My grandma was weary of moving so much and requested that she go home to Kansas for the baby to be born. So Grandpa took off work, and my mom, Pearl, was born in Montezuma in June 1950.”
Ben E. Schmidt
After their elevator work ended, Ben and Ruth settled in Osceola, S.D. and took up farming. They raised three daughters and one son.
The Daily Plainsman, Dec. 9, 1966
Lore from the elevator years continued to circulate within the Schmidt family. Mindi’s uncle Lincoln told of working on Tillotson’s elevator at Stromsburg, Nebr. and falling in love with a girl who lived there. “He could see from the top of the elevator when she arrived home from work. They did marry and raise a family.”
Ben and Ruth Schmidt left South Dakota for Oklahoma in 1967. Ruth, who loved to sing, worked as a nurse and caregiver. Ben had a custom-combining business. He died in 1997.
Mindi migrated back to South Dakota in the early 1990s. Her grandmother Ruth died in 2016 in Kansas.
The Schmidts represent Tillotson Construction as exemplars of hard work, sacrifice, and resourcefulness. Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators is honored to record their achievements.
Pages 6 and 6A of the Tillotson Construction Co. record document the stretch in 1950 to 1951 when the company further extended its accomplishments as a builder of reinforced-concrete grain-storage buildings, completing main-house elevators or annexes at sixteen locations.
The Omaha company led by Reginald O. Tillotson and Mary V. Tillotson produced 3,685,996 bushels of new capacity in this period. Jobs were in Nebraska (6), Iowa (7), Missouri (1), and Texas (2).
Here’s the complete list of locations: Palmer, Ringsted, Ocheyedan, Thompson, Palm Grove, West Bend, and La Porte, Iowa; Cedar Bluffs, Aurora, Omaha, Wahoo, Greenwood, and David City, Nebr., Sunray and Hereford, Tex. (seen at top in 2018 photo); and Malta Bend, Mo.
Tillotson was in a continuation of its major phase. The average capacity among these sixteen jobs was 230,374 bushels. Not bad for a company that started with 60,000 bushels at Goltry, Okla. in 1939.
The smallest commission was the 50,000-bushel elevator at Malta Bend, Mo.
Largest was the 550,000-bushel storage annex at Sunray, Tex., which had to leave everybody connected with the job impressed.
Best-known from these sixteen locations is the Omaha terminal elevator with 382,880-bushel capacity. An annex was later added at this Vinton Street site. The elevator no longer operates, although there are once again plans afoot for redevelopment. Meantime, many people find it to be an eyesore. A mural project a few years ago tried to address that.
David City, Nebr.Vinton Street, OmahaWahoo, Nebr.
Special notes on page 6 indicate that Tillotson built a 19-foot Stran-Steel bridge at Sunray and the Greenwood job was “rainy @ start.” Notes on page 6A show Omaha included a train shed, truck shed, truck scale, and office.
In addition to the aforementioned bridge, Sunray also had a basement tunnel.
The reader is invited to peruse these records to find additional details.
As with Minnesota, where we know of just two jobs, we have to ask why Tillotson Construction Co. did so little work in the state of Missouri. After all, it’s an agricultural leader, a noteworthy part of the Grain Belt, ranking eighth in corn production. Tillotson built plenty of elevators in neighboring states. All we have to show for work in the Show-Me State is a 1951 elevator at Malta Bend.
An irony in this comes from the fact that Charles H. Tillotson was born in Brunswick, Mo. in 1877. In the mid-1920s, when he worked for Van Ness Construction Co., there was involvement with a wood elevator in Wilcox, Mo.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to know details of how Van Ness ended up as owner of an elevator that it likely enough built?
After the death of my great-grandfather Charles H. in 1938, sons Reginald (my grandfather) and Joe (great uncle) launched Tillotson Construction Co. to build grain elevators of reinforced concrete.
For a concrete elevator, Malta Bend was “tiny” with capacity of 50,000 bushels. There were four tanks measuring 12.5 feet in diameter and reaching 90 feet in height.
Malta Bend, Saline County, Missouri via Wikipedia
I asked contributor Brad Perry for his take on Missouri. His reasoning follows:
Until modern genetics, reduced tillage, and other tech advances, Missouri agriculture North of the Missouri River was “subsistence.” Similar to southwest and south-central Iowa below Interstate 80. The primary crop-growing regions were the valleys north and south of the Missouri River, chunks of eastern Missouri adjacent to the Mississippi River, and in the Bootheel.
Yes, there are some 1940s and 1950s concrete elevators (or earlier) but they tend to be barge-loaders or feed-soybean-wheat processors.
Missouri’s grain business has been dominated by two companies, both of which are cooperatives. One is MFA, or Missouri Farmers Association, headquartered in Columbia. The other is Ray-Carroll County Grain Growers, of Richmond, Mo. I have worked with both–quite extensively with Ray-Carroll.
MFA complex at Brunswick, Mo. by Brad Perry
A third factor in Missouri grain markets has been St. Louis, which was the primary destination of any grain not already loaded on barges on the Missouri River. Ray-Carroll has an elevator in St. Louis.
Finally, the Missouri grain world changed with large trains. Ray-Carroll was the leader in this for Missouri. They geared up for 54-car (now 110-car) Burlington Northern trains at Hardin (seen in Brad’s photo at the top of this post); 50- and then 75-car trains at Norborne (“Soybean Capital of the World”); and 75- and then 100-car trains at Carrollton.
Ray-Carroll next built greenfield shuttle loaders at Slater and Corder–their first moves on the south side of the Missouri River. They have also turned their Brunswick location into a Burlington Northern shuttle loader.
MFA has tried to follow suit with a greenfield loader at Hamilton, along with upgrading a couple of other facilities.
