Category Archives: Road Trips

California dairy exodus will change crops, affecting southern Great Plains elevators

by baggyparagraphs

Elkhart, Kan.

Story and photos by Brad Perry

When you see southwest Kansas down to Amarillo, Tex. from the air (or Google Maps), a distance of 150 miles, you see thousands of center-pivot circles. The pivots were installed to grow corn for the beef-cattle industry, the huge feed yards that are located in this part of the U.S. It’s not unusual to see 100,000-head-capacity yards in this region. It became a “cattle magnet” with the construction of the IBP kill facility at Amarillo in the early 1970s. 

Why here?  Because of few people, water from the Ogallala aquifer, cheap natural gas to power the wells, and a plentiful supply of feeder cattle from Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico ranchers.

This heavily irrigated part of the Great Plains, and the crops that are now grown there, will be changing as drastically as any agricultural region in the U.S. 

Why? “The cows are coming!” It’s is one of the two major areas to where California dairy cows are being relocated.  

Why? Water issues and concerns about methane emissions in California.

In anticipation of all these dairy cows, new cheese plants have been built in Dalhart and Lubbock, Tex. and in Dodge City, Kan. 

The other area where California cows are moving is the Columbia Valley of the Pacific Northwest. And to point out what most folks don’t realize—California, not Wisconsin or Minnesota, has been the number-one dairy state for more than 30 years.

Tillotson elevator at Rolla, Kan., 1948
Rolla in more recent times

Here’s the change: When the cows move in, farmers tend to switch to growing forages rather than corn. It means alfalfa, grass mixtures, and specific corn varieties for silage rather than grain. They’re important for proper nutrition for dairy cows, high in protein (especially alfalfa) and the roughage is great for a ruminant. An acre of forage crop can produce about twice the biomass as compared to corn. On top of that, forage production uses significantly less water than irrigated corn. And on top of this, forages can’t be shipped in by train. An AI overview explains: 

Forage crops like hay and silage are rarely shipped by train because they are bulky, have a low financial value per pound, and spoil or catch fire easily if handled or stored incorrectly over long distances. Trucks offer a faster, door-to-door option for regional deliveries where rail lines do not go.

Tillotson’s elevator at Ensign, Kan.

Corn, and lots of it, will be imported into this market, as it has been to California. The beef cattle are still there and corn will supplement the dairies’ rations.  That’s why there has been a big push to build train-unloaders. JDH (formerly J.D. Heiskel & Co.), 5V, a joint venture between Five Rivers Cattle Feeding and Viserion Grain, and Viterra, which on July 2 merged with Bunge, are building shuttle unloaders in this market. The Andersons, of Maumee, Ohio, purchased ADM’s interest in Skyland Grain for the same reason.

We’ll see rather quickly the change in cropping patterns. I suspect these changes will move all the way to Dodge City, Kan. and beyond. 

And, yes, it will dramatically impact the grain elevators in this market.

Then and now Part II in Montezuma, Kan. confirms modifications to original cupola

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

In the previous post, I expressed uncertainty on the fate of the curved cupola atop Tillotson’s 208,000-bushel elevator built at Montezuma, Kan. in 1948.

Everything else about the elevator matched a 1954 photo, but the cupola appeared to have been modified since. One might even say mutilated.

The original cupola measured 21.5 feet long, 47.5 feet wide, and 46 feet high. Maybe it wasn’t commodious enough to meet a need for higher capacity.

Two readers responded to the post, offering their explanations about the situation.

Longtime reader Chandler Thomas steps forward with this analysis:

“From the photos provided we can ascertain these things. The concrete headhouse/cupola has been removed and a steel structure installed in its place. Both bucket elevators/“legs” are in place, which can be seen on one of the night photos.”

Chandler Thomas continues:

I designed and constructed several upgrade projects to Tillotson elevators.

Commonly, the first issue was to increase leg capacity. There was ample space in the leg wells to accommodate a higher capacity leg. Doing this normally required removal of the pothole-type distributor and replacing it with a double-rotary distributor as is shown in the photos. 

In a few of my projects, the new distributor was larger in diameter than the headhouse width.

I suspect, since this elevator does not show any signs of an explosion, that the headhouse was selectively demolished, a steel structure was constructed in its place to support the new distributor, and legs and the lower portion of the steel structure were enclosed to help keep rain out of the bins from the locations where spouts entered them and from the manholes.

Meanwhile, reader Robert Summers gives a different account:

“Grain dust explosion damage circa 1980 required building a new head house, and by that time OSHA specs encouraged or mandated leg motors and drives not being enclosed to minimize risk of major damage from grain dust explosions.”

We’re grateful to our readers for sharing their expertise

Then and now in Montezuma, Kan. suggests mods to Tillotson’s original cupola

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

Studying new and old images after my visit to Montezuma, Kan. leads to a question: What happened to the cupola?

In the 1954 photo seen above, a photo taken as Tillotson Construction Co. was finishing a 259,000-bushel storage annex for Montezuma Co-Op, we also see the 1948 main house, a twin-leg affair with 208,000-bushel capacity.

The curved cupola measured 21.5 x 47.5 x 46 feet. By reaching up nearly 170 feet, it made quite a grand statement in the small town not far from Dodge City.

An even larger annex was added later in the 1950s.

What I didn’t notice during my visit in the dark is a modified cupola, as revealed in my own smartphone photos and a contemporary look supplied by Brad Perry.

It’s clearly the same Tillotson elevator complex, but the cupola has been mutilated.

Contemporary photo by Brad Perry

It’s squared off and crowned with a red beacon. There appears to have been a conversion with the head pulleys left exposed.

Replacing a cupola would be unprecedented. Was there an accident that caused damage?

An explanation has to be out there.

Candid view pairs Tillotson’s 212,500-bushel elevator, small wood elevator at Elkhart, Kan.

by baggyparagraphs

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.

Evidence emerges concerning blaze near Tillotson elevator in Minneapolis, Kan.

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

Reader Jim Kay has helped us to answer a question. Kay went to the Ottawa County Historical Museum, where he’s an advisory board member, and dug into the files. Therein he found a photo of a wood elevator ablaze in Minneapolis, Kan. near the concrete elevator built in 1947 by Tillotson Construction Co.

The caption beneath the photo reads: “Remember the elevator fire of 1947? The blaze was at the Farmers Elevator in Minneapolis. The fireman walking toward the truck is thought to be the late Floyd Forney. Photo Courtesy of Lew Wilcox.”

Kay adds his own note: “Date should read 1952.”

Blog partner Kristen Cart first visited Minneapolis years ago, a visit I’d forgotten when I went there on my road trip and as I wrote a subsequent post. Kristen had already identified the elevator as Tillotson’s 100,000-bushel job that’s listed in our records.

With more than 500 posts and 1,700 images since 2011, it’s not always easy to remember.

Kristen’s listed all the specifications of the 1947 job and inserted some nice photos, including the one above. At the time of its construction and for some years after, the elevator was unique because of the integrated cupola (below). It was later retrofitted with the boxy high-rise cupola seen in the more recent photos.

Tillotson returned in 1948 to build the mill building.

Kristen wrote:

The elevator was starkly beautiful, balanced, and gracefully situated in its surroundings. Though it was small, its graceful proportions made it seem monumental.

On my visit, photo above, I missed the embossed manhole covers Kristen had already identified. The employee who came out of the office to greet me said the whole complex was the work of Chalmers & Borton, and instead of prowling around I took him at his word and then listened to him say the Tillotson elevator must have been the one destroyed by a fire, which he thought was in the 1990s.

Jim Kay has now verified that there was a fire. The rest of the tall tale I was given doesn’t match other facts we’ve turned up. What is now known thanks to Jim’s diligence is that the Tillotson elevator escaped a fire, then served as the anchor for an expanded operation, with a retrofitted cupola and storage annex by Chalmers & Borton.

The graceful Tillotson elevator is a survivor, still on the job. All gratitude to Jim Kay for his legwork, helping to flesh out the story.

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

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

One of the last photos from the archive of Tillotson Construction Co. that relates to our exploration of southwest Kansas is from the tiny Stevens County town of Moscow. Time was scarce and we weren’t able to swing by the elevators in Moscow, Rolla, or Elkhart in that part of the state, but the aerial photo gives us a good look.

The single-leg elevator in Moscow stands along the Cimarron Valley Railroad and U.S. Route 56. It was built on an original plan in 1948, duplicating the curved-cupola that Tillotson had worked out the previous year in nearby Satanta.

The 100,000-bushel Moscow elevator had four tanks measuring 14 feet in diameter and reaching 120 feet in height. The job required 1,070 cubic yards of reinforced concrete and 49.8 tons of reinforcing steel (including jack rods).

The main slab was 40 x 45 feet and covered 1,712 square feet. The gross weight loaded was 5,490 tons.

The cupola was 14 x 36 x 23 feet (L x W x H). Pulley centers in the leg were 145.5 feet apart.

A note in the records, at the bottom of page 3 (not shown), says “Bad weather.” A second note, this one on 3A, indicates the office building at the site was also part of the build.

I’d like to say more about the history of the Moscow elevator, but from lack of access to digitized Kansas newspaper files, I can’t find contemporary reports of the construction nor any background on Moscow Elevator Company or E.L. Gaskill & Sons, whose names are proclaimed in the aerial image.

For now, I have to satisfy myself with the knowledge it was a good-looking elevator when new, another example of Tillotson style.

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

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

Finding ourselves pressed for time after entering southwese 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

by baggyparagraphs

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.

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

by baggyparagraphs

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

by baggyparagraphs

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.