Fine points of Kansas grain business and brokers illuminated in brief

by baggyparagraphs

Editor’s note: Our post on the Mayer-Osborn elevator at Pritchett, Colo.–part of the Utah-Colorado-Kansas 2026 Road Trip series–referred to the Hart-Bartlett-Sturtevant Grain Co., whose name is seen in the above photo. Below, as a companion piece in the series, we present more information on the Bartletts from that organization.

By Brad Perry, Contributing Writer

Bartlett & Company of Kansas City, Mo., along with Garvey Grain Company of Wichita, Kan., and a few more family companies has long been a major player in the Kansas wheat business. Bartlett & Co. was founded in 1907 and operated independently until 2018.

Kansas had more than its share of players, both co-ops and others, due to a couple of reasons.

First, wheat moved through terminal markets. The terminal normally had Class 9 (high-speed) status with the railroads, and were served by multiple rails. Many terminals were paid for with Commodity Credit Corporation storage contracts.

Second, hard red winter wheat (HRW) had and still has two markets: bread flour and exports. Add to this the fact that until the 1970s, most grain was shipped in 40-foot boxcars and as single cars–not today’s unit trains comprising car after car of the same thing. Flour mills had neither the storage capacity nor the land space to handle trains. Most still don’t.

This multi-layered distribution system gave tons of opportunity to generate margins, particularly as compared to feed grains and soybeans. Corn, milo, and soybeans didn’t need–nor rely on–terminal elevators for their markets. Instead, these harvests went to the end-user directly. That accelerated when the rails started with special rates for 25, then 75, and now 110 cars. Even the transport and processing of wheat is starting to change—several new flour mills from Grand Forks, N.D. to Guadalajara, Mexico now can handle large trains.

With the wheat margin potential, Kansas has always had lots of intermediate players. The “traditionals” have included Cargill, ADM/Collingwood, and Scoular. Quite a few “internationals” such as Ferruzzi Group, Garnac Grain Co., and Bunge Global have also been involved.

Bartlett was one of the traditionals. Then and now, it has operated country elevators as well as terminals in Kansas City, Wichita, and St. Joseph, Mo. Garvey was another traditional, as was DeBruce Grain, Inc., of Kansas City, and even Koch Industries of Wichita.

In one way or another, they are about gone. In 2018, Bartlett sold out to the Savage Group, a logistics company in Salt Lake City. (Officially, it was a $2 billion merger.) DeBruce bought some of Garvey’s assets–notably Haysville, Kan.–and then became a part of Gavilon LLC. Accelerating these changes is the construction of new train-capable elevators in Kansas. These new loaders eliminate the need for terminals elevators, taking links out of the supply chain.

Last issue as an example is the Far-Mar-Co elevator in Hutchinson, which is now ADM’s Elevator J. It’s the one that’s a half-mile long. In my career I can name eight different owners of that facility. There is close to 100 million bushels of space in Hutch in a market that grows near 10,000,000 bushels of wheat and corn.  

With a small crop, and decent exports for wheat this year, we’ll see a bunch of empty space at the terminals.

High and mighty, a Tillotson elevator rises above Springfield, Colo.

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

Not a Tillotson elevator, I insisted on June 8 as we drove into Springfield, Colo. Well, maybe a Tillotson elevator. Then we pulled up alongside and looked at the manhole covers. Yes, a Tillotson elevator!

We should have known by the curved cupola, but it was hard to see the exact form of it from the distance. That’s my excuse for not recognizing this majestic building.

As one of about 30 branch locations of Pride Ag Resources, the impressive Tillotson elevator in Springfield is mated to a storage annex and looks mighty fine. That is, except for the dryer unit at the back. It’s complete with scaffolding and a little cabin perched on a platform. Lord have mercy on this aesthetic mess!

Tillotson Construction Company’s records include the specs for a 1948 job in Springfield–a 250,000-bushel twin-leg elevator following the standard plan that was worked out the year before at Satanta, Kansas.

Another elevator stands east of Main Street in Springfield. Aside from this quick look, I ignored it in favor of the elevator that’s the subject of the other photos here. Now I wonder if I should have taken the time to visit this one. Maybe it’s the 1948 job listed in Tillotson Construction Co. records.

There’s nothing to suggest Tillotson hadn’t perfected its curved cupola, as exhibited at Springfield, until sometime later than 1948. The manhole covers here are embossed with the words Tillotson Construction Co., Omaha, Nebr., 1958.

The company records, which are incomplete, don’t list a Springfield job that year. It wasn’t unusual for Tillotson to build a main house and a storage annex. The annex usually came later.

Unable to explain the discrepancy between what’s recorded and what I found, I’ll await clarification. Meantime, there are lots of photos to examine.

As we were leaving, a farmer was filling his pickup at the co-op’s pump, and I said hello. He farms 7,000 acres at a location a few miles north of town. The dry winter led to failure of the spring crop, so he was plowing and discing and intended to re-plant in hopes of salvaging a summer harvest.

After the uncertainties as we had arrived in Springfield, it was with a note of triumph that I told him, “My grandfather built this elevator.”

Perception of doors remains consistent from Tillotson to Mayer-Osborn jobs

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

The walkout door on a grain elevator seems to be only a minor detail, but as a means of indicating lineage of elevators, it’s as important as a person’s nose. We say a girl has her mother’s or father’s nose, and the same for a boy.

Looking at the door pictured above, from the Mayer-Osborn elevator in Pritchett, Colo., we note the resemblance to walkout doors on Tillotson elevators going back to Goltry, Okla. in 1939, Tillotson Construction’s first concrete elevator.

The door in the photo below is from our 2018 visit to Goltry.

There are two common characteristics.

First, note the lintel above the door in each photo. A lintel is defined as “a horizontal architectural member spanning and usually carrying the load above an opening.” Every Tillotson elevator we’ve seen has a lintel above the walkout door. When William Osborn worked for Tillotson Construction Co., he absorbed this design detail, and presumably carried it west when he got into business in Denver. We see it repeated in the topmost photo, taken at Pritchett, Colo.

The second characteristic is the door’s blue color. At Pritchett, the weathered and time-worn door barely has some remaining blue. Goltry’s door, which would be about a dozen years older, held up comparatively well, color-wise–and there’s also some blue beneath the lintel.

Just a couple of details worth sharing to make the study of elevators richer.

A home mortgage for Reginald and Margaret Tillotson in 1939

by baggyparagraphs

We find notice of a $4,000-mortgage at 6% granted to R.O. Tillotson and wife (Margaret Irene) by The National Company, which appeared July 22, 1939 in The Daily Record, of Omaha. A record published in 1940 gave their address as RD 2, Omaha, which we take to mean Rural Delivery Route 2.

The Tillotsons formed Tillotson Construction Co. in 1938, and the company built its first reinforced-concrete elevator in 1939, the year of the mortgage. By then, the fifth of six children was entering the picture.

A 1937 ad in The Daily Record explained that The National Company was formerly known as First Trust Co. and had an office in 500 First National Bank Building. Built in 1917, this was the first high-rise in Omaha.

From earlier records, we know Charles H. and Rose A. Tillotson lived at 624 N. 41st St. Reginald and Margaret may have lived with them for a time.

It figures that this step in 1939, when they already had a swarm of kids, launched Reginald and Margaret into home ownership in a period when credit was tight. Ultimately, they built their dream home on a knoll in the Ponca Hills, north of Omaha.

Mayer-Osborn’s signature stepped cupola emerges from Comanche National Grassland

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

The Comanche National Grassland rolled on and on as we drove eastward on U.S. 160 in the southeast corner of Colorado. It seemed as if the scene would never change, but then a group elevators enigmatically appeared on the horizon. We hadn’t seen a cultivated field other than alfalfa for hundreds of miles on our drive from Utah’s canyon country. Where did all the agricultural bounty, as suggested by the elevators, come from?

We soon arrived at the Pritchett complex of Panhandle Milling. Not a soul was around, so I helped myself to some pictures. Most intriguing was the suave elevator with the stepped cupola. There were two manhole covers, but they were high up and I couldn’t read the embossed inscriptions. On subsequent review, they reveal the builder’s identity and more: Mayer-Osborn Co., Denver, Colo., The Hutchinson Foundry and Steel Co.

I was on the hunt for Tillotson elevators, so this was an unexpected find and it’s a big one, the first Mayer-Osborn elevator we’ve chanced upon in a while. We’ve never gotten our hands on Mayer-Osborn records and don’t know how many they built. Pulling one out of the weeds, so to speak, is a big deal.

The stepped cupola is a signature Mayer-Osborn feature, a great support in our argument that the architectural significance of grain elevators isn’t fully appreciated. Hello, Smithsonian!

The other concrete elevators at Pritchett revealed nothing significant to our cause. I did linger a few moments at the old wooden elevator, which is fresh-looking and could still be in use.

The Mayer-Osborn elevator may have been part of the story on November 25, 1951 when the Pueblo Chieftain reported “Baca County Farmers Near New Crop Production High.”

Jess Suhler, manager of Hart-Bartlett-Sturtevant Grain Co., told the Chieftain that about fifteen carloads had shipped from Pritchett. An agent at the Santa Fe station in nearby Springfield said the grain was going to Denver and then to west coast feed mills. The paper further reported:

“Shipments do not nearly total the crop production, however. Much of the grain is being held locally for feeding and for later sale. The 1951 maize crop promises to be a record one.”

Taking a closer look at the towering elevator, I saw Hart-Bartlett-Sturtevant Grain Co. in fading letters on lower part of the headhouse. In a 1950 suit against the I.R.S., the company declared its headquarters to be in Kansas City, Mo., and it owned and operated 54 grain elevators in seven states. It was renamed Bartlett Co. in 1954.

There’s undoubtedly more to learn about Mayer-Osborn’s elevator in Pritchett, but it’ll have to be saved for a future post. Meanwhile, we’re still reveling in our good luck.

Sun-dazzled in Utah, we find rock formations and a granary are twins

by baggyparagraphs

Maybe we’ve spent too long looking at grain elevators. On the other hand, after visiting Bryce Canyon National Park and seeing the hoodoos and rock towers, we experienced an irrefutable doppelgänger effect when we happened upon the abandoned Osiris Mill and Creamery, a.k.a. Red Mill. The two locations are thirty miles apart within Kane County, Utah. Osiris Mill, named for the Egyptian deity of the underworld, has the requisite ghostly quality and serves as a mysterious double to the park’s eroded formations.

Osiris mill in Garfield County, Utah hides century-old secrets in a canyon

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

John’s Valley Road, the narrow paved byway from Bryce Canyon City, Utah to the tiny hamlet of Antinomy, follows the east fork of the Sevier River through remote country that hardly promised an elevator discovery, yet we found a mill house and grain storage tanks in an obscure place called Black Canyon.

The wooden structure that adjoined stubby concrete tanks appeared after we passed a series of irrigated alfalfa fields on the plateau. Four tanks rose about twenty-five feet from the canyon floor. They were creased at regular intervals and seemed to indicate a type of construction other than the familiar slip-forming of our prairie and Great Plains elevators. The outer surfaces of the tanks were pleated, so to speak, and I had the impression they were made of precast concrete and joined together by mortar. The place was fenced, though, so it wasn’t possible to get up close. My guess is that, because the tanks aren’t so tall, a lower load-bearing rating meant this manner of construction produced a result sufficient in strength. Additionally, it’s hard to imagine a continuous-pour operation in such an out-of-the-way place.

In the central space between them, the four tanks supported a generously proportioned superstructure, which I’d otherwise call a run, and a ramshackle cupola.

I stepped out of the car for pictures but found it unnerving to have the absolute stillness broken by intermittent blasts from a medium-bore rifle. It seemed a safe bet the target wasn’t a grain-elevator blogger, though. Anyway, it’s illegal to shoot across a road, isn’t it? So I went ahead with the photos. It was around five o’clock, and the ruins were harshly backlit.

Returning afterwards to the car, I drove away hoping to find details about this attractive hybrid building, part grain-storage facility and part mill.

In no more than ten miles, my wife and I came to the tiny Garfield County hamlet of Antimony, pronounced AN-ti-MO-NEE, which takes its name from a “metalloid element” that’s useful as an alloy and in the making of semiconductors.

The name Antimony definitely doesn’t suggest a grain trading capital. The town is said to be so remote that it was the last in Utah to get electricity.

Nothing was moving except for a sturdy-looking man doing landscaping chores at Antimony Community Center.

“Oh, that’s Red Mill,” he said when I described the subject of my investigation. There used to be dryland wheat farming where the alfalfa is now, he said. The wheat growers gave it up after the Drought of … he couldn’t remember but reckoned the flour mill was last used sixty years ago.

Red Mill, more properly called Osiris Mill and Creamery, was built by William F. Holt, a major figure in western development projects. When he died in 1951, The New York Times declared, “WILLIAM HOLT, 87, BUILDER OF TOWNS; Developer of Resources of the Imperial Valley Dies–Work Formed Basis of Novel.” Or as the Garfield County News summarized: California’s Imperial Valley benefited from Holt’s touch.

Holt first came to Garfield County from his home in Hollywood, California in 1923. The County News lauded him:

“He was the real father of the Imperial Valley, starting work there in about 1900, at a time when there was neither water nor people in that entire country, its only inhabitants being horned toads and Gila monsters, and the turkey buzzards and crows all carried canteens.”

The News reported Holt’s initial development had started at Widstoe, namely, a power plant, a creamery, and Holt “expected to have a flour mill running in the near future.” He was president of Garfield Land Company, which operated out of a Los Angeles P.O. box. In 1926, Holt received permission from the Utah State Engineer’s Office to divert water from the east fork of the Sevier and fill a 3,000-acre-foot impoundment. The water would be used to irrigate 1,600 surface acres. Holt liked to go on about how California was becoming overcrowded and needed to import food — “everything that is suitable to be raised in this part of the country,” according to the News. He pushed for a new road between Widstoe, where his own fields were, and Escalante so that farm produce could more easily reach the Union Pacific line at Cedar City, arriving the next night in L.A.

Osiris Mill served as a granary and creamery at the now-defunct town of Osiris, named for the Egyptian deity who lorded over the underworld while also representing fertility and agriculture. Ruins on the other side of John’s Canyon road indicate the remains of Osiris. Widstoe is also characterized today as a ghost town; it was up on the plateau where I saw the irrigated fields. Widstoe and Osiris were separate by fifteen miles, and it seems safe to assume the flour mill and creamery referred to in the newspaper were the same relic we visited despite not being located at Widstoe.

Henry Bell Wright, the first American novelist to make $1 million, modeled a character on Holt in The Winning of Barbara Worth. Wright’s novel became a silent movie starring Ronald Colman, Vilma Bánky, and Gary Cooper. This Western flickered before the public in 1926, the same year the Utah Engineer’s Office awarded irrigation rights.

While time itself seems to stand still in this part of Garfield County, a full century has elapsed since the movie’s release.

The Osiris Mill and Creamery was well-crafted, which makes today’s overgrown site especially regrettable.

Despite the gunfire, our discovery of Osiris seemed heaven-sent. Even though it’s not one of Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators, we’re pleased to shine the spotlight once again on this remote wonderment.

An elevator mystery is solved with the help of a contributor

by kocart

By Kristen Cart

My blogging partner Ronald Ahrens posed a question for our readers. Where in the world was this old elevator shown above on the right? Like most wooden elevators from the early days, it was likely demolished years ago. After a productive internet dive, one of our loyal readers, Suzassippi, found the answer. I combined the elevator picture she found with our mystery image to compare the two.

The earlier photo was clipped from an image posted in Suzassippi’s comment. It shows horse-drawn wagons and an ancient elevator. The caption identifies the site as Pocahontas, Iowa, from the early 1900s. The two images above were photographed from slightly different vantage points, but they look uncannily alike.

You can see that a few details had been altered by the time the later photo was taken. For one thing, the 1930s-vintage car was a giveaway. Plainly, many years had intervened since the earlier image. You can see that a chimney relocated from one side of the scale-house to the other, a bay window was added, and an intriguing alteration to the roof line occurred just in front and to the left of the vehicle. I puzzled and puzzled over that oddity–the roof had been changed, but I couldn’t figure out how it fit with the existing roof line. Perhaps the perspective made it appear to attach at an impossible angle. Maybe it’s just me.

The doors to the driveway appeared unchanged, swinging outward rather than rolling up. The structure directly in front of the car was the scale-house, adjacent to the covered driveway, where the telltale roof line and window locations appeared to be just so, except for where the roof was extended. Finally, the painted lettering on the elevator closes the deal. Much faded, it was still precisely where it appeared in the earlier photo, years before. Undoubtedly, our mystery elevator was located in Pocahontas, Iowa.

That leaves us with the question of why the elevator photo was found with the Tillotson archive. If the family was involved with the building, renovation, or demolition of this particular elevator and its associated buildings, we have no proof of it. However, this item from the Pocahontas Record Democrat of Oct. 3, 1940, may give a clue:

We know Van Ness Construction Company was headquartered in Fairbury, Nebr. before 1917, perhaps early enough to have built this old elevator. But they were involved with many other aspects of elevator construction and destruction, so we don’t know, and nothing yet explains the later photo. Was this the old elevator that Tillotson Construction Company replaced in 1940?

Tillotson Construction Company of Omaha built a new elevator of reinforced concrete in Pocahontas in 1954, when it splashed across newspapers in all of its slip-formed concrete glory. Charles J. Tillotson “walked the plank” during the construction. Evidently, the Tillotsons had a long standing connection with the location, but we have not teased out where this old wooden edifice fits into the timeline.

Tillotson archive yields mystery photo of Troth Tractor & Equipment of Omaha

by baggyparagraphs

So far, it’s impossible to explain why a photo of a tractor dealership was included in the archive of Tillotson Construction Co. We await further illumination.

Newspaper searches first reveal Troth Tractor & Equipment Co. in 1946 in Omaha. The dealership offered an integrated approach to farming. A classified ad in the World-Herald advises readers: Troth Tractor and Equipment, Authorized Ford-Ferguson Sales and Service. 2515 O St., MA 7958

Henry Ford and Harry Ferguson collaborated on the Ford-Ferguson 9N tractor, examples of which are seen here. This was around the same time that Raymond Loewy and Associates, of New York, designed the new Farmall for International-Harvester.

Wood Bros. Pickers (see sign) refers to the Wood Brothers Thresher Co.’s single-row corn harvester that the tractor towed along. Picked corn would be lofted into a wagon that trailed the picker. Wood Brothers was founded in Minnesota in 1893 and moved to Des Moines in 1899. A Facebook post provides further information:

Wood Bros. Thresher Company marketed their corn pickers on their own and then sold to the Harry Ferguson Co., a part of Ford MotorCompany. 

WHY PAY CASH? asks Troth in this 1949 ad. 

New improved Ford tractors and Wood Brothers pickers cost you less per acre and mean more income. Buy your new improved Ford tractor, Dearborn equipment, and Wood Brothers corn picker now. Up to 2 years to pay. Very low budget rates. A farm plan to fit your every need. Let the Ford tractor pay its own way and keep the profit in your pocket. We are easy to deal with. See us today. Omaha’s Ford Farming Headquarters.

The Dearborn Disc Plow and other implements were produced by the Dearborn Farm Equipment, agriculture division of Ford Motor Co. Note the neon sign in the showroom’s plate glass.

H.B. Smith, next door at 2517 O St., also appears to be a postwar addition to the O Street tableau.

To repeat, we can’t explain this photo. But if you told us that it was included because Uncle Mike Tillotson loved Ford Motor Co. so very much, that would be good enough.

Pages 3 and 3A of Tillotson Construction record, 1947-1948, including Cavalier, N.D.; Richland, Nebr.; and Montezuma, Kan.

by baggyparagraphs

Pages 3 and 3A of the Tillotson Construction Company’s construction record duplicate pages 2 and 2A from a previous post, but these are the complete scans of full long pages. The extra information concerns Cavalier, N.D.; Richland, Nebr.; and Montezuma, Kan.