Montezuma, Kan. at night provides a whole different kind of imposing figure

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

Rising from the flat plain at night, the Tillotson elevator in Montezuma, Kan. imparted a special feeling of triumph in my soul. It was 10.00 p.m. on Monday, June 8, and after our daylong elevator chase we were hungry, having had no opportunity for a proper dinner, and weary after about 14 hours from Durango, Colo. in the car.

There were afternoon stops at Pritchett and Springfield, Colo.. At sundown, we hit Satanta, Kan. after moving east on U.S. Routes 160 and 56.

Arriving so late in the evening proved fortunate, though. A grain elevator at night is a whole different kind of imposing — especially with the red beacon aglow and Venus twinkling in the western sky.

I did my best, photo-wise, with the smartphone. Scuttling around the elevator complex, I noticed a car sitting across the way, where Aztec Street met Texcoco Street (U.S. 56). Someone was keeping an eye on me. The car finally pulled away after, I presumed, the occupant(s) were satisfied I wasn’t making mischief.

Built in 1948, this Tillotson elevator followed the Medford, Okla. plan for a twin-leg main house with eight tanks measuring 15.5 feet in diameter and reaching 120 feet in height. Capacity was 208,000 bushels.

The driveway was 12 x 18 feet, and there were eight bins overhead. Altogether, the house incorporated 23 bins and a dust bin.

The job required 2,040 tons of reinforced concrete with 88.3 tons of reinforcing steel.

Dimensions of the slab were 50.5 x 66.5 feet. The dump pit was 16 feet deep.

The cupola measured 21.5 feet long, 47.25 feet wide, and 46 feet high. The elevator topped out at 172.5 feet. 

In the 1947-1948 period, Tillotson Construction Co. built elevators in a remarkable flurry of activity over a relatively dense cluster of towns such as Springfield, Colo.; Dalhart, Tex.; and Moscow, Kan. They were within a 150-mile radius or so.

Tillotson returned to Montezuma in 1954 to build 259,000 bushels of storage. This effort comprised 10 tanks measuring 18.5 feet in diameter. The job consumed another 1,731 tons of reinforced concrete and 80.34 tons of steel. This annex is seen to the left of the main house when looking at the complex from across the street. Another annex, seen at right, was by a different builder.

Notes in the construction record refer to the annex’s 117 foot “tunnel,” which I take to mean a run atop tanks. Another note refers to 30-inch belt conveyors” and “tripper,” which diverts grain from the moving conveyor belt into a desired destination. 

In my haste, I forgot to photograph the manhole covers. Obviously, I need more practice in the dark.

Details of Tillotson’s Satanta, Kan. elevator reflect the passage of decades

by baggyparagraphs

In the waning light, a doorway leading into the interior of the old grain elevator wants to tell a story. This wrinkled countenance suggests the elevator men who worked here over the nearly 80 years since Tillotson Construction Co. finished the build at Satanta, Kan. Those men patterned their days after the demands of the seasons.

It was matter-of-fact kind of place. The humblest adornments sufficed. NO SMOKING: a stenciled order barely noticeable but strictly obeyed. “Satanta Coop Grain Co., Elevator A” painted neatly on boards now weathered beyond imagining. Words once vivid in red are faded, recalling a distant moment.

The many patches, broken glass, and bare concrete speak of the decades of harvests. And of their dispersion like beams of light into colors.

Who knows how many trucks delivered wheat, how many bushels in all? Some trains stopped, others rumbled by.

The faded portal, squinting back, suggests all of this but reveals no more.

Use this link to see our 2012 post on Satanta and Rolla.

Stately on the plain, Tillotson’s elevator at Satanta, Kan. is weathered but working

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

As the evening sky turned to warm pastels and a train slugged along the track on terra firma, we approached Satanta, Kan. in search of the Tillotson elevator built in 1947.

Tillotson Construction Co. records led us to expect a 250,000-bushel, twin-leg main house with eight tanks (silos) measuring 18 feet in diameter and rising 120 feet. The cupola measures 21.5 x 48.5 x 40.25 feet, and tops out the elevator at 166.75 feet in height.

We hadn’t even considered it, but the harvest was just starting and trucks were expected to rumble up any moment. Everybody was prepared to work into the night. An employee saw me prowling around and came out of the office to caution me. Meanwhile, I’d already taken advantage of the opportunity to snap a couple of interior photos.

To allay questions about my legitimacy, inasmuch as possible, I said, “My grandfather built this elevator.”

The Tillotson elevator is 79 years old and has the scars and scabs and prostheses to prove it, but remains in operation for Skyland Grain LLC.

Complete specs for the elevator are found below in this post.

The elevator followed a plan established at Dike, Iowa and included eight internal bins. I looked for evidence of them along with the other marvels inside.

A remark on the records says, “Loading spout out bet. 2 tracks. Roto Flo dist. equipped 1 leg.”

U.S. Route 160 had led us from Springfield, Colo. into Kansas near a town called Johnson City. Continuing on this highway to its junction with Kansas Route 190, we covered the 50 miles to Satanta.

Tillotson built elevators in other southwestern Kansas towns: Moscow, Elkhart, Rolla, Montezuma, and Ensign. We lacked the time to wander to the first three and would only make it to Montezuma in the dark.

There is no record of Tillotson building the storage annex.

After Montezuma, we passed through Ensign on the way to our hotel at Dodge City, checking in at 11.00 p.m., exhausted after a 600-mile drive from Durango, Colo. with stops at several elevators. Then the clerk surprised us with the news that our room was on the third floor and neither of the elevators was working. They still weren’t working in the morning, either, so it came to hundreds of steps with all our stuff up and down and up in the night, down and up and down again in the morning.

On the side trip to Satanta, I should have asked to test the man lift. Despite the age, it probably works just fine.

Examination of newspaper accounts reveals fate of Tillotson elevator in York, Nebr.

by kocart



York Republican, June 6, 1951

By Kristen Cart

We use the old construction ledgers kept by the Tillotson Construction Company of Omaha to locate the elevators they built, and when one turns up missing, we have to find out why. Such was the case in York, Nebr. In earlier posts we touched on York, but a deeper dive into newspaper accounts revealed the issues that led to the demise of the Tillotson elevator there.

The York elevator was announced with fanfare in 1951. It was to go up in time to receive the crop that year. On Apr. 11, the York News-Times published a representative image of a Tillotson elevator, and added that six such elevators already existed in rural Nebraska at the time.

The next clue to the fate of York’s grain storage was the collapse of the Farmers Co-Op Elevator in 1990. When I first found the newspaper account, I thought, “Ah-hah–that’s what happened!” Except it wasn’t the Tillotson elevator. This elevator experienced a second collapse a day later, destroying more tanks (silos) while workers attempted to unload the remaining grain. No one was hurt in the second collapse. Remarkably, the elevator was salvaged and continued to serve, eventually surviving the Tillotson elevator.

The fate of the Tillotson elevator was announced in the York News-Times of Aug. 8, 1991, where we found that the “white elevator” was slated for demolition because of severe structural problems. The article noted that the main elevator had been built 40 years earlier, which coincided with the build date of the Tillotson job. No rounded headhouse (a Tillotson signature) is evident in the photograph, but the article leaves no other interpretation, since the elevator that had collapsed a year previously was still in service. Evidently an annex had been added after the main Tillotson elevator was built in 1951.

York News-Times, Aug. 8, 1991

The previously collapsed elevator was eventually torn down also.

So now I know why, as I travel down I-80 at 75 miles per hour, no white edifice looms in the distance as I approach York. As the people involved with the construction of these prairie monuments pass away, we are losing the best witnesses to their beginnings. Few people make much of a note of their endings. So more and more, we rely on newspapers.

We count ourselves lucky that so many of the participants have spoken about their experiences in posts here at Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators. Now we will continue our research as best we can, even in places like York where the elevators are long gone.

A cupola’s label reads ‘Gano’ and leads to hidden history from Pritchett, Colo.

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

In haste to get out of southeastern Colorado and into southwestern Kansas, I snapped an extra picture of an elevator’s cupola labeled “Gano.” I did this even though it wasn’t a Tillotson elevator. Almost as an afterthought, I also grabbed two shots of downtown Pritchett, Colo., where three abandoned elevators stand including a Mayer-Osborn elevator.

It seemed I must be leaving a lot behind as we raced eastward.

What does Gano refer to? What happened to Pritchett? Why were the elevators abandoned?

George E. Gano was a grain dealer from Hutchinson, Kan. In a 1930 telegraph to U.S. President Herbert Hoover, he explains his situation as the government was competing against him and others like him:

“The Farmers National Corporation issued orders to buy wheat at stabilized price only from co-operative elevators. Personally have 50 good country elevators in southwest Kansas. Buy wheat direct from the farmers and have for 30 years. This order closes every elevator I have as stabilization price 12 to 15 cents above the open market in which I am forced to sell my grain. If this order stands this is simply confiscation of a business built up in a lifetime. You are appropriating money to this organization from which I contribute a good share in taxes. Not more than half of the farmers in this territory belong to co-operatives. This is the most vicious order ever issued by an agent of the United States government and should be rescinded at once. Am only too glad to assist in stabilizing the wheat price. Have no axe to grind with the Farmers corporation. All I ask is fair play and an even break. This not only applies to me but to every independent grain dealer in this section. Wish you would confer with Mr. Legge [Farm Board Chairman Alexander Legge] and explain matters.”

The George E. Gano Grain Co. was formed in 1924 out of another organization in Hutchinson, Kan. Gano was able to build this Pritchett elevator or reinforced concrete at a later date.

Bunge Co. bought out Gano in 1947.

Time magazine had observed in 1929 that “private grain commission men in Chicago and Minneapolis were fighting for their economic lives against the Farmers’ National Grain Corp. created and largely financed by the Federal Farm Board as a direct cooperative sales agency for grain growers.”

One assumes Gano was part of the fight.

As for Pritchett, we found this profile among the Denver Public Library’s digital collections:

 “Occupied town, Pritchett is fading away. The railroad that once brought prosperity to Pritchett has been torn up miles east of the town. The town is a victim of drought and changing economic conditions. Pritchett is located in what was once the broomcorn belt, but plastic has replaced this natural material in brooms. Farmers have turned to growing wheat, milo and sorghum. Livestock covers the rangeland. The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe formed a subsidiary, the Dodge City & Cimarron Valley Railway Company, which built a rail line from Kansas to Pritchett in 1926 that opened the following year. Originally, the rails were to reach three miles farther to Joycoy, and based on the prospects of rail service, Joycoy was founded. Merchants who had set up shop were given inducements by the railroad in the form of choice lots to move to Pritchett. The move from Joycoy to Pritchett included the post office, and nothing remains at Joycoy. Pritchett was named for Dr. Henry S. Pritchett, one of the Santa Fe’s directors. The new town grew rapidly with plenty of open farmland. Soon there were a couple of lumberyards, state bank, hardware stores and three grocery stores. With the construction of three hotels and the addition of a drug store, service stations, a bakery and clothing stores, the town was complete. A trio of grain elevators was constructed by the tracks on the south side of the business district. Pritchett even had its own radio station. With the Great Depression of the 1930s was combined with a sustained drought to create the Dust Bowl jobs disappeared along with the town’s only bank. The government sponsored Works Progress Administration brought in hundreds of jobs for those willing to work on roads, bridges and construction projects. This helped relieve Pritchett’s depression. Pritchett is located on U.S. 160 south of County Road DD and north of County Road CC.”

In 2017, a Facebook post by Jordan Palmer explained more eloquently:

Down near the southeast corner of Colorado sits the small town of Pritchett. A spur of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe [Railway] once ran here off the mainline that runs through nearby Springfield. Abandoned long ago, the tracks are gone, but weathered ties and broken crossbuck signs remain along the old grade. The most noticeable pieces, though, are the three grain elevators, standing abandoned on the south edge of town. They tower lonely over the high plains waiting for grains and trains, both of which will never come.

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. Here, as a companion piece in the series, we present more information on Bartlett 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.