Photos from then and now reveal a pioneering elevator in Rolla, Kan.

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By Ronald Ahrens

Finding ourselves pressed for time after entering southweste Kansas on U.S. 150, we chose Santanta as the most practical destination and had to skip three other locations where Tillotson Construction Co. built elevators in the late-1940s. The three towns–Elkhart, Rolla, and Moscow–were farther south on U.S. 56, and it was too big a detour.

Now from my desk at home in California, I’ve gone into the files and photos for Rolla, a Morton County village of less than 400 people. Tillotson built a 148,000-bushel elevator there in 1948. The aerial photo seen above suggests it was the first reinforced-concrete elevator on the site along the Cimarron Valley branch of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. The label on the elevator’s cupola informs us this job was for Rolla Co-Op Equity Exchange.

In 1948, Tillotson built elevators in Manchester, Okla.; Moscow, Montezuma, and Rolla, Kan.; Springfield, Colo.; Polk and Richland, Nebr.; and Cavalier, N.D.

A satellite view shows the Tillotson elevator still standing and evidently in use. In the screenshot above, we see it in the center, distinguished by the ovalized cupola.

The Rolla elevator was built according to the plan already established at Manchester, Okla.

Key specs:

  • Five tanks measuring 15.5-feet in diameter and 120 feet in height 
  • 12 x 17-foot driveway 
  • 8 bins over drive, 17 bins in all, no dust bin
  • 15.5-foot spread 
  • Electrical room included
  • Ext. to roof for grain
  • 1,282 tons of reinforced concrete
  • 20 tons of concrete for hopper 
  • 62.3 tons of reinforcing steel 
  • Main slab 49.5 x 46 feet 
  • 7,176 tons loaded
  • Cupola dimensions of 21.5 x 34.25 x 28 feet and topping out at 148 feet high 
  • Pulley centers 151 feet apart, wheels turning at 42 rpm 
  • Boot pulley 72 x 14 x 2 3/16 inches
  • Head pulley 72 x 14 x 3 15/16 inches
  • 330-foot-long belt, 14-inch cups

More details in the construction record below.

My search for digitized news stories about the commissioning, construction, or completion of the elevator produced nothing. A call to the Morton County Library yielded the information that the local papers haven’t been digitized and rather are on microfiche. A kind librarian has offered to look into past issues as time becomes available. So there remains hope of turning up more information about Rolla and the other southwest Kansas towns where Tillotson built elevators in the late-’40s.

Photos from then and now reveal an enduring elevator as Springfield, Colo. shrinks

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By Ronald Ahrens

The Great Depression of the 1930s and disruptions of World War Two caused Baca County, Colo. and its seat of Springfield to suffer a population decline of 45 percent. Census data reveal that Springfield had 1,800 residents in 1948, when Tillotson Construction Co. built a massive 250,000-bushel, twin-leg elevator of reinforced concrete.

As observed in a previous post, the mighty elevator followed the standard plan implemented in 1947 at Satanta, Kan.

Since then, we’ve learned that Tillotson formed a rounded cupola in Satanta, possibly the first demonstration of the style that became a Tillotson signature.

A note in the construction record says a primary difference was that Springfield had two radial distributors up high instead of the Gerber Roto -Flo system installed at Satanta.

Integrated into the main house were no fewer than 20 internal bins and a dustbin.

Another note says the job included construction of the office building seen to the right of the elevator. Photos from our June 8 visit show the building little-changed.

If only I’d possessed an aerial drone to take the same shot from the northwest.

What’s particularly revealing about the 1948 aerial photo is the sparsely populated village, as seen on a day when light snow covers the nearby fields. The new elevator dwarfs two neighboring wood elevators. The water tower, previously the tallest structure, is no longer so impressive.

And why were there no trees? Springfield was founded by Windsor Town Company in 1887. The tree-planting trend evidently took hold after 1948.

Springfield’s population has continued to dwindle. The town’s website claims 1,375 souls in 2020. It’s part of a general decline of population in towns and villages of the Great Plains.

The elevator and storage annex now rise from a leafy setting. With its cupola, the elevator reaches 160.25 feet, far higher than any tree that will endure the gales. Springfield is 139 years old, but at the current pace, I wonder if the bicentennial in 2087 will find just the elevator outlasting the people and their trees.

1946 Reo Gold Comet dump truck added ‘spit and sputter’ at Clinton, Mich. elevator and mill

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By Ronald Ahrens

Editor’s note: I found this old story and photo for the Toledo Blade in my files–my first attempt to apply a poetic touch to a grain elevator. 

In a bay where grain hulls and residue fire out of a chute, a 43-year-old Reo Gold Comet crouches behind its own long snout, awaiting the next call to duty. 

A coating of dust on the cab gives the truck a ghostly look. The blue paint on the hood needs to be polished, and the chromed grille hardly sparkles. One windshield wiper is missing, and a door won’t open. 

But the dump box still goes up and down in back, which is the main concern of Charlie Steffens. That and the fact that the flathead six-cylinder engine still runs. 

“There’s a lot of spit and sputter in it,” says Mr. Steffens, co-proprietor of Atlas Feeds. “But it runs good. You just have to use a little more choke than usual.” 

Mr. Steffens bought the truck “a couple of years ago for $600 or $700” from a man in Tecumseh. The seller had to choose between the truck, which he intended to restore, and his wife, who presumably suffered from a little neglect of her own.

Once Mr. Steffens got the Reo to the feed mill, he was promptly offered more than the total purchase price for the hydraulic hoist alone. He wasn’t interested; the truck was too useful as a utility vehicle, with its main function being the disposal of leftovers from the milling process. 

The sour-faced truck holds a certain appeal for customers. They pass it on the way inside the store for hardware items or a packet of seeds. Most people ask the truck’s age, Mr. Steffens says, although some may remember it as the truck whose brakes “cut loose,” injuring a former owner. 

But around the busy mill, there’s neither time nor energy to imbue this everyday object with exotic qualities. 

“We’re just a country elevator,” Mr. Steffens says. 

Photos from then and now reveal Satanta, Kan. as a breakthrough in cupola design

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By Ronald Ahrens

As described in an earlier post, we visited the Tillotson elevator in Satanta, Kan. at sundown on June 8 and found our subject jubilantly aglow with a cloak of soft pink against the sky’s fading cobalt.

Tillotson Construction Co. built the twin-leg elevator as part of its Class of 1947. It was a 250,000-bushel undertaking in the same year they built elevators in Minneapolis, Kan.; Dalhart, Tex.; Rushville, Nebr.; and Helena and Eva, Okla. It was only exceeded in capacity by the 265,000-bushel classmate 100 miles away in Gruver, Tex. Tillotson had already built a 350,000-bushel elevator in Farnsworth, Tex. in 1945. The Class of ’47 nonetheless comprised the latest and greatest achievements for the Omaha company that had formed only nine years and one World War earlier.

It’s worth keeping in mind, as contributor Brad Perry informs me, there was need for greater storage capacity as elevators were situated farther and farther from shipping terminals to the east.

To see Satanta from a distance, while a locomotive scruffed and chuffed along the tracks on a local mission, was a revelation. A rising arpeggio from a string orchestra would have fit the moment.

There was another epiphany to come. After returning home to California in mid-June, I opened the photo file and found a portrait of the brawny new elevator, a gleaming 166.75-foot-tall class president of an elevator.

Windows high in the sky brighten the interior of the substantial, curvaceous cupola.

A note in the construction record says “Round end on cupola not per plans.” The way the story was transmitted by my late-uncle Charles J. Tillotson, the rounded cupola was an improvisation as Grandfather Reginald Tillotson found 90-degree corners unsatisfactory and determined it was easier to bend the formwork around the structure.

Did Satanta provide that moment of innovation?

Triumphant letters spelled out Satanta Co-Op Grain Co. then. Traces of a succeeding label are seen now. It’s a different style, and there’s racy red-and-blue striping on a tank.

The 1947 photo shows the elevator already at work. The 10.5-inch load-out spout is connected to a boxcar. The driveway door is up, allowing access to the 50-ton truck scale that measured 50 x 10 feet. We see snow melting around the lot on a fair day. In the lower left, a 1939 Ford Tudor sedan stands by for action. To the immediate right of the elevator, an arrangement of steel tanks is outfitted with a ladder and crude bridgework for access.

And to the far right, the old wood elevator looks on with awe.

A storage annex came along later, helping to complete the scene we found on that June evening at the start of another harvest. After nearly eighty years, the Tillotson elevator was still proving its worth by serving the Satanta community.

Momentarily missing in Minneapolis, Kan., a Tillotson elevator is recovered

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By Ronald Ahrens

For the final stop on our Utah-Colorado-Kansas road trip leading to Omaha, Neb., my wife and I arrived in Minneapolis, Kan. at 12.00 noon on June 9 expecting to find the 100,000-bushel elevator that Tillotson Construction Co. built in 1947.

Seeking something obvious, we drove right up to the elevator complex at West 2nd Street and Markley Avenue. A friendly gent stepped out of the office and said Chalmers & Borton built the entire complex. Indeed, there were Chalmers & Borton manhole covers on the tanks of the annex. The main house featured a rectilinear cupola that was definitely not in the Tillotson style. We didn’t see any manhole covers on the sides of the tanks.

Then the gent told the tale of a massive fire in the 1990s that started in a feed mill, spread to a large lumber pile, and damaged an elevator next door. The fire department spent three days fully extinguishing the blaze and its last embers. The elevator had to be demolished.

We went to the site he indicated but saw nothing to suggest a former elevator.

Then we had lunch at Papa’s Burger Mill, nursing hopes of being able to track down details of the fire through newspaper records.

Minneapolis, a town of about 2,000 people, is situated just west of U.S. 81 some twenty minutes north of Salina, Kan. An AI overview offers:

“The area became a focal point for European-American settlement after the Civil War. In 1866, Israel Markley built a grist mill on the banks of the Solomon River and laid out the town. Originally called Markley’s Mills, the city was renamed Minneapolis around 1871—a name locals adopted from Minneapolis, Minnesota.”

None other than George Washington Carver attended high school here.

We had met apparent defeat in Minneapolis, though, and left the site without any proof of the elevator that’s in the Tillotson records. Or so we thought. It turned out to be a good thing that I took one establishing shot (top of post) showing the elevator complex from a southeastern vantage point.

To start work on this post, I searched unavailingly through newspaper archives. I called the Minneapolis village office and was referred to the Ottawa County Historical Museum. A woman named Beth revealed that the Minneapolis Messenger has never been digitized. She referred me to a museum advisory board member. I called up Jim Kay, a farmer, who said he’s 85 years old and a lifelong Ottawa County resident. He recalled a bit about the catastrophic fire but said there was never a second concrete elevator in Minneapolis. I sent him a photo from my desktop.

What was all the data from the construction record trying to tell me?

My investigation was heading nowhere until I thought to look through the recently acquired collection of photos from the Tillotson archive. Ta-da! There was a picture of Tillotson’s job. Inscribed on the back is “Minneapolis, Kan. 1947. The photographer’s stamp is B&M Photo Shop, “Everything Photographic,” Minneapolis, Kansas.

I called Jim Kay again. He said the whole question had been discussed at morning coffee. He agreed the photo depicts the same main house that stands today.

“It’s taken from the west side,” he said.

It’s an unusual elevator in the Tillotson catalog. A note on the record says it followed the plan established at Pond Creek, Okla,, but this one went up with “drawform walls thru cupola.” The single-leg elevator has four tanks measuring 15.5 feet in diameter and reaching 125 feet in height. The job consumed 906 cubic yards of concrete and 40.87 tons of reinforcing steel. Another 10 yards of concrete went for the hopper.

Additional notations indicate “attached drive,” “no dist. floor,” and “6′ spreads–9 bins.”

Fully loaded, the elevator was rated at 5,000 tons.

I have no idea about the rectangular tower. Nothing indicates it was part of the job. The only other note of significance says “Transfer spout to mill.”

The way we figure it, Chalmers & Borton, came along and modified the elevator, adding a new cupola in addition to building the storage annex.

The main house built by Tillotson still stands on its 41×41-foot slab doing the work it was designed for nearly eighty years ago. Thanks to help from others and a bit of luck, I’m satisfied it survived the inferno and we found what we were looking for.

After dark, Tillotson’s typical blue door and lintel show special character in Montezuma, Kan.

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By Ronald Ahrens

Here it is, the blue door and lintel that was a signature of Tillotson Construction Co. style from its first concrete elevator in 1939 all the way through the 1950s. This one made a special impression when I visited the Montezuma, Kan. elevator after dark on Monday, June 8, 2026.

The light suggests ongoing activity. Certain townsmen were already suspicious of me and my car with California plates, though, so I didn’t peek inside, didn’t knock, and sure didn’t try to open it.

The worst-case scenario: It would be hard to explain why I fell down the stairs.

Omaha council OKs one step in proposed adaptive re-use of Vinton Street terminal

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By Ronald Ahrens

Fifteen years of blogging has exposed us to various concepts for the re-use of old grain elevators. Proposals have ranged from interesting to daft.

Consider these examples:

  • The sleek Mayer-Osborn elevator in Tempe, Ariz. was going to be made into a hotel, which struck me as daft.
  • Two guys from Missouri had cast their eyes from big terminals in Buffalo, N.Y., to San Francisco’s threatened Pier 92, with a mind to developing vertical farms inside the tanks. It seems more practical to adapt other types of buildings for vertical farming.
  • In 2012, the Vinton Street terminal complex in Omaha received national attention after the annexes served as the canvas for a public art project; a nonprofit organization commissioned artists to create themed banners that were draped over the silos. Then someone proposed turning the complex into a climbing facility. The art was intriguing, but the climbing facility was daft.

Mayer-Osborn’s 1951 Tempe elevator

A few weeks ago, after we announced receipt of an archive of family papers and photos, Patrick Mason, director of business development for Dicon Construction, contacted us.

“Any chance they gave you anything related to the Vinton Silos? I am the owner. We are building apartments on the site but preserving some of the bins.”

We haven’t gotten to the blueprints yet, but there are among them records for the Vinton Street complex.

The Vinton Street complex, which was a signature project for Tillotson Construction Co., has been problematic for years. The Reader, which bills itself as “A Service of Nebraska Public Media,” reported “The old grain elevator and silos have sat empty for decades, attracting urban explorers, adventurous teens and an array of graffiti artists. In 2017, a man in his 50s fell about 30 feet, lying hurt with a broken leg until he was discovered at sunrise. In 2024, a teenage girl was seriously injured after falling 20 feet, and another teen was rescued after getting stuck.”

Latest news on the Dicon Construction’s adaptive re-use project is to knock down most of the elevator and annex, saw off a few tanks above ground level, and spent $56.2 million to build an apartment complex. A rendering shows a small building and the pool and patio resting atop the stubs of about 10 sawed-off tanks.

The Omaha City Council was considering Dicon’s application for $10.4 million in tax-increment financing.

The proposed project ranks somewhere between the high point so far, which is the public art project, and the low, which is the idea for a climbing facility. My wife lived two blocks from the elevator and points out the limited circulation of traffic in the neighborhood, which ends up pressing against Interstate 80.

Would hundreds of new residents improve or degrade the neighborhood?

All governmental units are perpetually hungry for added revenue. If the Omaha city council really wants to go ahead with Dicon’s unusual development, the members should have a midafternoon snack to tame their hunger and then think hard about the questions of public safety and the impact of a high-density development at this clogged-up location.

I don’t have an opinion on the appropriateness of the project, although it seems quirky. Nor am I one who thinks every grain elevator should be restored and made into a shrine, as we’re seeing in Broken Arrow, Okla.

One thing to say, though, is that I continue to marvel at the way a derelict grain elevator fires the imagination.

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

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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 of one another.

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.