By Ronald Ahrens
If a wood elevator ever looked toylike, it was the one in Elkhart, Kan. As seen in an aerial photo, it resembles a model railroader’s prop.
In 1946, Tillotson Construction Co. built an imposing 212,500-bushel elevator of reinforced concrete as part of a post-World War Two building boom. As in the auto industry, which stopped building passenger cars and light trucks for more than three years, scarce resources curtailed activities in the civilian construction sector until the troops were coming home.
Tillotson had built five elevators in 1941, none in 1942 and 1943, and one in 1944.
By 1945, the Omaha company regathered its crews to build seven elevators in 1945–all in Oklahoma and Texas. The next year, there were at least seven more. One was in Wellsburg, Iowa; four were in Oklahoma, and two in Kansas: Ensign (240,000 bushels) and Elkhart. By that time, Tillotson–which started building concrete elevators in 1939–had already built seven elevators, all in Oklahoma and Texas, of greater than 200,000-bushel capacity. The largest of them was a whopping 340,000 bushels at Farnsworth, Tex. The ability to go upscale with the concept and execution of these elevators remains impressive more than eighty years later.
Tillotson hired Potter Studio, of Lamar, Colo., for an aerial shot of Elkhart. On Facebook, I found a post by Timothy K. Coy, who wrote:
My grandmother, her husband Gerald and my parents S.D. and Bette Coy, operated Potter Studio in Lamar from about 1946 to 1955, when Elizabeth Potter retired and the business was sold.
The aerial job must have been one of the studio’s first important commissions.
I have Page 1 of the construction record but lack Page 1A with full specs. Nevertheless, we know Elkhart was built on the revised plan established in Medford, Okla. in 1941. The record isn’t entirely specific about Medford, but I think there were 10 tanks measuring 15.5 feet in diameter and 22 bins. I have no information on whether the job included the office and service buildings.
Until 1945, the record included costs. Medford was built for $41,289.37. While the total isn’t available for Elkhart, there’s a note that the labor rate was 80 cents per hour, with overtime ringing in at $1.25.
Elkhart is situated along U.S. 56 in the southwestern corner of Kansas, bordering Oklahoma’s Panhandle. On our road trip, we were unable to detour to Elkhart but did go to Satanta, which is about 60 miles northwest on that road. The Satanta elevator is one of the first, or perhaps the very first, where Tillotson rounded the corners of the cupola. This Elkhart elevator is a good example of the early rectangular style.
I wish there were more to say about Elkhart but can point out that it previously came up more than a decade ago in a post on this blog. I’d chatted with a California neighbor and learned she had just visited Elkhart. She shared pictures, taken from the car, of “a funny building.”
What was a novelty to her was an awe-inspiring symbol of progress to the people of Morton County, Kansas in 1946, leaving the wood elevator next door to sing the Cimarron Valley Outmoded Blues.