Rich lode of archival material means Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators will grow

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators is thrilled to report wonderful news. A benefactor has sent us 36 pounds of records salvaged from the Tillotson homestead north of Omaha. The carton includes five-dozen 8×10 black-and-white photos, most of them nice aerial shots, and many from locations that are new to us. Really? We built a warehouse for Peet’s Feeds in Council Bluffs? Along with all this, there are dozens of rolls of blueprints. It’s enough to keep us at the grindstone for a long time. 

As our more than 300 subscribers know, the Tillotson brothers—Reginald and Joe—founded Tillotson Construction Co. after the 1938 death of their father, Charles H. Tillotson. Reginald and Charles H. had spent years building wooden elevators for Van Ness Construction Co., but upon the death of Charles H., the sons launched their new company. They intended to use reinforced concrete and put up larger elevators.

Reginald and Joe split up in the late-1940s. Joe moved from Omaha to Denver and set up his own operation, but he died in a car accident not long afterwards. Tillotson Construction Co. flourished through the 1950s, building elevators from North Dakota to South Carolina. It also spawned offshoots such as Mayer-Osborn Construction Co., in which Kristen’s grandfather, William Osborn, was a partner. 

We need Carl Sagan to count all these blueprints.
Millet Ville, South Carolina

Kristen Cart and I launched Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators in November of 2011. When our careers would permit, we blogged away and have created more than 500 posts. This has resulted in a small but steady audience. The last three weeks have brought 1,005 pages views, which we think is pretty good. They come from all over the world. We weren’t posting very often in the last few years because we ran out of material. For us, it’s either site visits or archival records that lead to posts. Site visits are tough because I live near Palm Springs–not a single elevator!–and Kristen might not want me to say where but there are cowboys and elk and petroleum.

Things have changed as my Uncle Mike no longer lives in the Tillotson home, which Reginald built of reinforced concrete in 1952. Sorry to say, the home had become what authorities described as a “hoarder’s nightmare.” Pleased to say, the folks who purchased it in 2025 were diligent about salvaging the good stuff. Their shipment also includes my grandmother Margaret McDunn Tillotson’s copy of the Wayne Spizzerinktum yearbook from her Wayne State College Class of 1925. There is a St. Pius X Daily Missal, which is a puzzle because the Tillotsons went to St. Philip Neri; it was my family that went to St. Pius X but I don’t know anything about that book. And here’s Uncle Tim’s Fifth Armored “Victory” Division basic training almanac from his army service in Camp Chaffee, Ark. Inside it, inexplicably, I found a snapshot print of three nuns wearing all-white, and there’s a five-story parking garage in the background.

I called up the librarian at Wayne State, who says he’ll take the yearbook. The army almanac is another question. It has an elaborate, stamped leather cover but the volume sustained water damage. The missal is falling apart. Maybe I will return it to St. Pius X and hope it makes up for my poor performance as a student. 

Charles H. Tillotson

All this is a roundabout way of saying Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators is about to experience a growth spurt, although we’ll see if it’s akin to the growth spurt from wooden elevators that held 20,000 bushels to concrete ones that held 120,000 bushels. Timing is great because our careers are not the hindrance they used to be, so we will be able to work on new posts.

It’s great to have all this source material, but things are pretty lopsided in favor of Tillotson Construcdtion Co. We would love to get our hands on an equivalent archive from Mayer-Osborn and from J.H. Tillotson, Contractor. 

We invite first-time and casual readers to join with our subscribers and receive email notifications of new posts. All should watch this space for a renewed effort in telling the grain elevator story at the most basic level. It’s turned out a richer topic than we ever figured, and now comes this opportunity to groove on it and grow the blog. 

How some wooden elevators in Nebraska were repurposed to produce cattle feed

by baggyparagraphs

Story and photos by Brad Perry

In Nebraska, many of the 12,000- to 18,000-bushel wood elevators got turned into feed mills, mainly for cattle feed. Most of these elevators had a roller mill in the basement and made a decent feed mill due to their small bins. An example from Walthill, Nebr. is seen in the photo above.

Halbur, Iowa mill
Dodge, Nebr.
Oakland, Iowa

In Iowa, this was less common due to more hogs than cattle. Swine feeds tended to be more complex with more ingredients than cattle feed.

Feed mills were still being built of wood in Iowa up until the 1960s.

Quad States Construction, out of Des Moines, Iowa, got started building wood feed mills and then became a major builder of concrete elevators and annex tanks.

The men and projects of Van Ness Construction Co. appeared in social notes of local newspapers

by kocart

Story by Kristen Cart

While searching old newspaper articles for early Van Ness Construction Co. work projects, I happened upon an interesting way to track them. Society pages in newspapers routinely mentioned visitors to a town and the movements of important citizens. The purposes of the visits were usually noted. In these pages, I found a treasure trove of elevator information in various Nebraska newspapers. A few examples follow, giving clues to the tempo of Van Ness Construction’s operations.

Anton Proskovec, of Lushton, Nebr., was a foreman for the Van Ness Construction Company of Omaha, and he worked on several jobs in 1934. The People’s Banner of David City, Nebr., among other papers, carefully cataloged his comings and goings that year.

Anton Proskovec of Lushton visited home folks, the J. B. Proskovec family on Sunday. He has been made a foreman of the Van Ness Construction Co., of Omaha. They are tearing down an elevator in Lushton.

The paper also cataloged Anton’s visits to Roscoe, Nebr., where the Van Ness company was installing a dust eliminator; Shelby, Nebr., where they built a new elevator; and Linwood, Nebr., where they tore one down. Five newspaper items from The People’s Banner detailed his movements in 1934. Further investigation revealed that his father, James B. Proskovec, owned property, conducted business, and was involved in local politics in Butler County, Nebr.

In two similar newspaper notices, we discovered that Virgil Johnson, the family patriarch of the elevator construction company Johnson & Sampson Construction Co., got his start as an employee of Van Ness Construction.

First, the Beatrice Daily Sun of Feb 20, 1934, mentioned that Virgil Johnson and Rupert Hammonds were boarding with Mrs. C. R. Rossel while ironing the Farmers’ Union elevator for Van Ness. But where was the job site?

Then, in the Beatrice Daily Sun of March 22, 1934, we found this gem:

Messrs. Rupert Hammons (sic) and Virgil Johnson of the Van Ness Construction company of Omaha finished ironing the Farmers’ Union elevator early last week and left Rockford.

Rockford is a tiny Gage County hamlet nine miles from Beatrice on U.S. Route 136.

Immediately preceding that note, we find:

Joe Tillotson of Omaha was a supper guest at the A. L. Burroughs home Tuesday night the 13th.

Joe, one of the sons of Charles H. Tillotson and brother to Reginald, could have been in town either working in the elevator trade or simply visiting the family. It is hard to guess. Joe, much later, founded the J. H. Tillotson Construction Co. of Denver, Colo. with William Osborn as superintendent.

The Colfax County Caller recorded the movements of Reginald Tilloston and his wife Margaret on Oct. 18, 1934, noting:

Mr. and Mrs. R. O. Tillatson (sic) of Omaha have taken light housekeeping rooms at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Joe Divis. Mr. Tillatson (sic), who is employed by the Van Ness Construction Co., is helping wreck the Dawson elevator in Linwood.

An interesting connection was revealed when the Colfax County Caller of Nov. 22, 1934, mentioned that J. A. Divis returned from Shelby on Monday, where he had been employed by Van Ness for four weeks.

Three months earlier, an article located the Tillotson couple in Arapahoe, Nebr. According to The Public Mirror of July 26, 1934 …

Mr. and Mrs. Tillison (sic) have rented light housekeeping rooms at the Orval Millard residence. Mr. Tillison (sic) is employed with the Van Ness Construction Co. of Omaha and is working on the Farmers’ Elevator repair job.

The Tillotsons had a very full work calendar that year.

The Nemaha County Herald of Feb 14, 1935, said that C. H. Tillotson of the Van Ness Construction Co. of Omaha was a Brock visitor on Tuesday. Was it a sales call for elevator work in Brock, Nebr.? Or was it a social visit?

Other newspaper social pages gave us more Van Ness employees and their projects: Mr. Webb was in McNeill, Nebr. in 1935 doing elevator repair; Phillip Connell was in Rydal, Nebr. in 1935 for an automatic shipping scale installation; Guy Freeman of Fremont was in Fremont, Nebr. and in Kansas in 1935 doing work for Van Ness; Mr. Wise was foreman at Grafton, Nebr., doing elevator remodeling in 1938; and Mr. R. A. Spatz was foreman at Blue Hill, Nebr. and Keene, Kans. in 1938, performing elevator overhauls.

The previous items spanned the period after the Van Ness family left the business, and when Charles H. Tilloston was a partner. They show indirectly how prominent in the trade Van Ness Construction had become.

A much earlier mention from Marysville, Kan. in 1925 said Mr. Greenway was working on a new elevator there. This Mr. Greenway was among the board members when the company first incorporated. It was the lone mention of Van Ness in the society pages, before the 1930s, that I could find so far.

In an upcoming post, I will review some rather unusual incidents and life events that shed further light on Van Ness Construction.

A reader’s contribution presents two of the largest–and last–wooden elevators on the prairie

by baggyparagraphs

Story and photos by Brad Perry

When I started with the Omaha Bank for Cooperatives in 1975, my accounts were the co-ops north of Interstate 80. One was Tekamah, Nebr., where Farmers Elevator was in grain and feed. I was told this was the last wood elevator built in Nebraska. 

It was huge for a wood house — 100,000-bushel capacity. I was also told they went with wood due to poor soil conditions. You can still see it on Google Earth. It’s the big one on the left.

Editor’s note: The poor soil conditions may have led to a heavy concrete elevator settling.

This June 29, 1961 article from the Burt County Plaindealer describes the new twin-leg elevator that would soon open with all the modern fittings found in a concrete elevator.

The very last wood house we financed at OBC was for the co-op at Sisseton, S.D. It’s still in use and holds 60,000 bushels. 

I can remember it cost $6 per bushel ($360,000) when a 250,000-bushel concrete house was $500,000. 

Minnesota and North Dakota stayed with wood longer than anywhere else because of their cold weather. They built as much as 250,000-bushel wood houses. Wood is a much better insulator than concrete and does not have condensation issues.

Old wooden elevators must repurpose or perish, as the surviving elevator in Lander, Wyo. shows

by kocart

Story and photos by Kristen Cart

It’s wonderful to find an elevator that has taken on a new life. The Lander, Wyo. grain elevator, which stands sentry at one end of the business district, was in a sorry state when its rescuer arrived on scene, as told by the Cowboy State Daily, Jan 20, 2024. It took a lot of money and a bit of wild romanticism to see beauty in the spoiled hulk, and to do something about it. I too wondered how that bike got up there. Now I know.

Artists who happened through Lander have also been inspired by the elevator, and you will find it with its Bike Mill and Purina checkerboard represented in paintings and drawings all over town. J. C. Dye, a local painter and sculptor, recently worked on a painting commission that featured the Lander elevator prominently, with a cattle drive running down the main street in its shadow. The painting will soon adorn a local concern.

An old elevator normally will not overcome fifty or more years of pigeon poop and rotten grain crusted throughout the interior, with rain and snow coming in through a ruined roof. It will become a haven for vermin, a nuisance, and a safety hazard. Then it will meet the bulldozer or the wrecking crane.

Many elevators didn’t make it that far, as revealed by story after story in local newspapers of elevator fires and the ensuing destruction.

A lot of these old monuments won’t overcome the day they no longer make money for their owners. The Cogdill elevators and mills in Dow City and Dunlap, Iowa would meet their demise by fire. The sons of Pat Codgill of The Cogdill Farm Supply Company intended to demolish them to modernize the operation after taking over for their dad. When I looked for them some years later, the elevators were gone.

The demolition at Arimo, Idaho on May 1, 2012.

The better preserved elevators may be taken down board by board for their pretty blond lumber, the way the elevator in Arimo, Idaho, met its fate. The wood became more valuable than the storage. The economics are brutal once these structures become obsolete.

A demolition in Billings, Montana, in 2025

I caught the very end of a demolition in Billings, Montana, recently, and stopped for a couple of snapshots. The old wooden mill was mostly shredded lumber, and the concrete bins were a tangle of rebar and gravel, with a few remaining hulks. In a few days, there would be little left. It’s a depressingly familiar scene.

It’s very nice to come across a survivor. Thank you, people of Lander, for saving a piece of your history.

As wooden elevators disappear, documentation becomes difficult

by kocart

Story and photos by Kristen Cart

As we research an earlier generation of elevator construction, we can find wooden elevators, but not the ones we hope to find. It is almost impossible to match a builder to a specific elevator this late in the game, especially among the few surviving examples. But we are trying.

The difficulty is easy to illustrate. A case in point is the old elevator in Chugwater, Wyoming. I noticed it in the early 2000s on one of our many hunting trips while bypassing the town on I-25. I planned for a future photo shoot there, catching a cell phone image on the fly a couple of times to note its location. Once, I pulled over on the side of the road to get a couple of for-the-record shots. But when I finally decided to give it a proper visit, the elevator was nowhere to be found.

Chugwater, Wyo, 2016. The elevator on the left has disappeared.

Chugwater is known for some rather fine barbecue sauce, and it also has a historic soda fountain with the best root-beer floats ever made (just don’t stop on a Tuesday or Wednesday, when they are closed). When I asked a local business proprietor how long the elevator had been gone, she didn’t know–although she grew up in the town, she didn’t notice its absence. It was just there, and then it wasn’t.

I drove to the old elevator location, and found hardly any debris. Some concrete pads still existed in the field next to the railroad tracks, but you couldn’t tell what had once stood there. I took a couple of documentary shots. Those telltale concrete pads only remained because digging up the large quantity of concrete that supported the structure would be too expensive. And who really cared?

I guess I care, and I am scrambling to catch the last moments of the few elevators I can photograph while they exist.

Another example is the elevator in Clayton, New Mexico. It presently serves as a coffee bean roasting facility for an adjacent coffee house, but not for much longer. The proprietor explained that the elevator was beginning to lean because the prior owner had removed some structural support beams for personal use. The elevator is showing the strain. The metal siding is beginning to buckle, and even the resident ravens seem worried.

A raven holds court atop the Clayton, NM elevator, March 2026

I took pictures–lots of them.

We will keep trying to find any surviving Van Ness Construction-built elevators, and we will document their history. In the meantime, I will catch snatches of hundred-year-old stories while memorializing wooden elevators for as long as I can.

An ancient Van Ness annex survives to the present in Alliance, Nebr.

by kocart

By K O Cart

When my blogging partner Ronald Ahrens received a cache of photos from his grandfather’s estate, he discovered pictures of the construction of an elevator annex in Alliance, Nebr., as indicated by handwritten captions. I searched my old elevator photos and found this 2016 image from my stop in Alliance on a trip through Nebraska. Details of the old headhouse were an exact match to the Van Ness Construction photos from Alliance, which Ronald featured in an earlier post on this blog.

I decided to revisit the site in February to see if the elevator and annex were still standing. We were in luck.

With the passage of another decade, the elevator (pictured above in my photo) looks more tattered and plainly unused, but it stands much the same as in this image. A local man who worked nearby said that owls lived in the headhouse, and they might come out in the evening, if I wanted to see them. I didn’t have time to stay until nightfall to find out. Otherwise, all was quiet. The annex had been quite a grand affair when first built, and was solidly constructed. It had not changed very much at all from the outside in nearly one hundred years.

This Feb 2026 photo shows some sheet metal loss and roof damage on the main elevator. The annex behind it remains solid.

I researched newspaper articles about Van Ness Construction and found that they repaired, updated, and also demolished elevators in the 1920s and 30s. Their niche in elevator construction fell somewhere between the first elevator pioneers and the builders of the concrete era. It is highly unlikely that many of the first-generation elevators survive, since new technology rapidly overtook them, and many of the Van Ness-period elevators are also gone. It was quite a shock to find one of their projects still standing.

To discover a Van Ness elevator that still exists, I start with a newspaper search to find a location, then check a Google satellite view to decide whether a visit is warranted. I also check my photo archives. So far, I have found only one, which, having dodged almost a century of tornadoes and the wrecking ball, is rather amazing to find. The Alliance annex holds the title as the only known remnant of decades of work by the Van Ness Construction Company. The title will stand, until we dig up another one.

Taken in Sep 2019, this image shows the size of the annex, which dwarfs the elevator in volume. It has weathered well.

After ‘Burning Down the House’ in Filley, a new elevator went up in nearby Crab Orchard, Nebr.

by baggyparagraphs

For a town that today has just forty-seven people, Crab Orchard sure presented a big footprint. Among other things, the little hamlet on U.S. 136 in Johnson County, Nebraska, about 20 miles from Beatrice, boasted a weekly newspaper, the Crab Orchard Herald. For remodeling needs, the Crab Orchard Drug Co. sold paint and wallpaper, while the Crab Apple Pharmacy carried back-to-school supplies. The Crab Orchard Lumber Co. promoted Arrow Carbolineum, which killed chicken mites in poultry houses after once-yearly application.

As early as Nov. 6, 1908, the newspaper was bragging up the Crab Orchard Telephone Co. for its part in an election-night bulletin-service event that brought national results to “a large and eager crowd” that gathered at the Bank of Crab Orchard. The results were relayed via the Nebraska Telephone Co., of Tecumseh, to the Crab Orchard assembly.

The Herald’s account included a bit of boosterism:

Telephone people all over the United States have heard of Crab Orchard and its telephone system, and we have the word of a man prominently identified with the greatest system in the country to the effect that there is not a more efficient telephone service anywhere than the people of Crab Orchard are getting. 

Could anything more be needed to make a tiny community self-sufficient? The Crab Orchard Grain Co. added what it could to the effort.

We know that Van Ness Construction Co. built a new elevator in Crab Orchard, and because Reginald Tillotson labeled the back of his photo “1934,” we nail down the year. This deduction is supported by a June 29, 1934 update from the Crab Orchard Herald:

The new elevator of the Crab Orchard Grain Co. is fast nearing completion. V.F. Wise of Grand Island, foreman of the Van Ness Construction Co., of Omaha, which is building the elevator, estimates that the job will be completed in another two weeks. The work has given employment to a large number of local men. The elevator, built at a cost of between $9,000 and $10,000, will have a capacity of well over 30,000 bushels. 

It was just over six years earlier, in the spring of 1928, that the company formed.

The Nye & Jenks elevator at Crab Orchard has been purchased by Wm. McNeil of Kansas City, the new owner taking possession immediately. The new business will be conducted under the firm name of The Crab Orchard Grain Co. R.E. Lidolph, local manager, will remain in charge.

We can’t determine when the outgoing Crab Orchard elevator was built. It conducted operations for Nye & Jenks under the motto “We Crave Business and Deal Square.”

Whatever reasons Nye & Jenks had for selling to Mr. Wise may have been compounded by the fact that the company lost an elevator in nearby Filley that April. A group of young people were returning from Beatrice after midnight when they saw “flames bursting through the roof.”

Meanwhile in Crab Orchard, R.E. Lidolph stayed put through everything, and he continued to preside after completion of the handsome new elevator.

On behalf of Crab Orchard Grain Co., he placed a Christmas ad in 1934, writing, “We wish to extend to all our customers and friends best wishes for a happy and prosperous New Year.”

Vintage photo shows a Riverton elevator, but what Riverton and what job?

by baggyparagraphs

The latest batch of photos from the Tillotson archive includes this picture of a metal-clad wooden elevator as seen on a bleak winter’s day. The only notation on back of the photo is “1-2,” which tells us nothing. And within the image, we see no sign or object that could help us pin down the location.

Was this a repair job the Tillotsons participated on with Van Ness Construction Co.?

Which Riverton is it? Towns named Riverton are found in Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Illinois.

We can only hope that by publishing the photo, we get a break in the case and someone will step forward with knowledge of the topic.

House with no fame: Clyde Co-Op’s elevator in Salt Fork, Okla. is short on readily available history

by baggyparagraphs

The recent discovery of photos from the Tillotson archive sometimes leaves us with images but no narrative. Such is the case with two photos taken by Reginald Tillotson, each showing different views of the north elevator at the Clyde Co-Operative Association station in Salt Fork, Okla.

The photo with the view of the driveway and dump pit shows the elevator’s south side. The one that’s partly obscured by a rail car is labeled “east side.”

Otherwise, as far as details, we note in the south-side view that the elevator wears some fifteen “fins,” which we assume are like battens that keep the metal sheeting from blowing away. [Editor’s note: See comment explaining that these objects are “anchorages” to add rigidity to the cribbed structure.] These fins are also seen in the east-side view. The hard question to answer is why they’re not found on the headhouse, too. Readers are welcome to contribute comments with their own views on the question.

Other posts in this blog attest to the fact that Tillotson Construction Co. and the Clyde Co-Op were well-acquainted with each other.

We were able to dig up some news–make that a “review”–of operations at Salt Fork, as published on Feb. 7, 1935 in the Enid Events newspaper:

At the Salt Fork Elevator you can always depend on the best market price for grain, just weights and excellent treatment. By adhering to these basic principles they have greatly increased their business. This concern has assisted their community toward prosperity and has helped to improve the conditions of the surrounding territory and they are at your service at any time. 

Grant County Journal, July 7, 1930

Service spells success for any business, and this one thing coupled with the quality of products sold and the high class service rendered may justly be placed the secret of success of the Salt Fork Elevator. 

The Salt Fork Elevator under the able management of Victor Ingraham, is one of the most favorably known and successful concerns of this section. This elevator is in the market for your grain at all times and has the proper facilities to handle unlimited quantities. 

The owners of this elevator have a wide and varied experience in the grain business. They have knowledge that can be gained only by experience and through this are able to secure for their patrons a service not usually found in this business. 

With the reputation for reliability, honest weights and top market prices, it is no wonder that Victor Ingraham has increased his patronage until now the Salt Fork Elevator is one of the largest firms dealing with farmers in this community. He is indeed authority upon grain and its allied lines. 

In this review we wish to extend our congratulations to this progressive and efficient establishment and refer them to our many readers.