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Monthly Archives: July 2026
A cupola’s label reads ‘Gano’ and leads to hidden history from Pritchett, Colo.
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 This is the most vicious order ever issued by an agent of the United States government and should be rescinded at once.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
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.