The Mayer-Osborn elevator in Odebolt, Iowa was one of the few they built that was never painted white.

Story and photos by Kristen Cart

Recently, I took a detour quite out of the way of the Interstate system to visit the town of Odebolt, where my grandfather, William Osborn, built an elevator. I introduced the western Iowa site in a previous post.

Tim pointed out the bin diagram for the elevator.

Tim Gunderson made a great tour guide for the site and the town. The part-time elevator worker and full-time farmer wanted to know the age of the Mayer-Osborn elevator as much as I did. It was an old stepped-headhouse, slip-formed, concrete elevator in the style of earlier Mayer-Osborn efforts in McCook, Neb., and Roggen, Colo., and it stood at the center of a sprawling grain operation.

During our inspection of the elevator, we saw tantalizing details that indicated mid-1950s architecture. The mechanical workings (never altered during renovation) recalled intact examples of my grandfather’s previous work. The reliance on mechanical controls was a clue to the early design.

The big wheel was a simple, elegant (mechanically speaking), way to distribute grain to the bins.

Most of the standard clues to an elevator’s age were absent or misleading. The manhole-covers inside the elevator bore no date (usually they do), but perhaps Mayer-Osborn ordered a quantity of manhole-covers, embossed with only their name, toward the end of their operations in the mid-1950s.

The “blue leg” is original, painted in Mayer-Osborn’s standard trim color

The elevator showed no signs of exterior paint. This was a deviation from the norm, and a sign of more modern construction. I began to suspect the elevator was built after Mayer-Osborn ceased operations, using left-over parts. But answers would come from elsewhere, in town, where we looked for a witness to the elevator’s beginnings.

Our next stop was the library, where we perused daily papers from 1955. As I thumbed through a number of pages, I realized I didn’t know which year to search, much less what day. It would not be an effective use of time–I could only stay a couple of hours before heading to the next elevator on my route.

Tim was looking up friends who might know more. We crossed the street to the bank, where Renae Babcock referred us to an insurance office nearby. There we met Dick Duffy, and he told us a story.

Dick Duffy was in high school when the elevator went up–he thought it was in 1954 or 1955. On dark evenings while spending time with a friend (who graduated in 1955), he watched construction activity at the brightly lit elevator site. Flood lights illuminated every corner of the scene. He recalled that the concrete pour went day and night, and as he shared some personal reminiscences, he said, “You won’t write that, will you?”

Dick Duffy shared memories of 1954.

One detail he did mention, which tightened the time range further, was a tragedy that happened during the fall of the year the elevator was built. It was 1954 when a young boy was run over by a car and killed in town. Dick thought the child’s name was Kevin Bower. The event was traumatic–it fixed the time of the year’s events forever in the minds of residents.

“Was that the year that boy Kevin died?”

“Yes, I believe it was.”

We have pegged the construction date for the Odebolt elevator to the spring and summer of 1954. At the same time, the Mayer-Osborn elevator at Blencoe, Iowa, was built under supervision of my dad’s brother, Dick. The concrete there was improperly mixed and two days of work were wasted. Shortly afterward, Mayer-Osborn ceased operations, and Grandpa Bill Osborn left Denver behind and returned to Nebraska to his family.

Heartfelt thanks go to the residents of Odebolt–those mentioned and unmentioned here–for their kindness and helpfulness. I don’t think I have ever experienced a friendlier reception while pursuing historical elevators.

The town deserves a good historical expose that goes beyond the scope of the blog. It is a town with a fascinating history, great civic pride, and a strong sense of identity from its days as a ranch property to today. I hope to learn all about it and to come back again.