Category Archives: Road Trips

Sun-dazzled in Utah, we find rock formations and a granary are twins

by baggyparagraphs

Maybe we’ve spent too long looking at grain elevators. On the other hand, after visiting Bryce Canyon National Park and seeing the hoodoos and rock towers, we experienced an irrefutable doppelgänger effect when we happened upon the abandoned Osiris Mill and Creamery, a.k.a. Red Mill. The two locations are thirty miles apart within Kane County, Utah. Osiris Mill, named for the Egyptian deity of the underworld, has the requisite ghostly quality and serves as a mysterious double to the park’s eroded formations.

Osiris mill in Garfield County, Utah hides century-old secrets in a canyon

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

John’s Valley Road, the narrow paved byway from Bryce Canyon City, Utah to the tiny hamlet of Antinomy, follows the east fork of the Sevier River through remote country that hardly promised an elevator discovery, yet we found a mill house and grain storage tanks in an obscure place called Black Canyon.

The wooden structure that adjoined stubby concrete tanks appeared after we passed a series of irrigated alfalfa fields on the plateau. Four tanks rose about twenty-five feet from the canyon floor. They were creased at regular intervals and seemed to indicate a type of construction other than the familiar slip-forming of our prairie and Great Plains elevators. The outer surfaces of the tanks were pleated, so to speak, and I had the impression they were made of precast concrete and joined together by mortar. The place was fenced, though, so it wasn’t possible to get up close. My guess is that, because the tanks aren’t so tall, a lower load-bearing rating meant this manner of construction produced a result sufficient in strength. Additionally, it’s hard to imagine a continuous-pour operation in such an out-of-the-way place.

In the central space between them, the four tanks supported a generously proportioned superstructure, which I’d otherwise call a run, and a ramshackle cupola.

I stepped out of the car for pictures but found it unnerving to have the absolute stillness broken by intermittent blasts from a medium-bore rifle. It seemed a safe bet the target wasn’t a grain-elevator blogger, though. Anyway, it’s illegal to shoot across a road, isn’t it? So I went ahead with the photos. It was around five o’clock, and the ruins were harshly backlit.

Returning afterwards to the car, I drove away hoping to find details about this attractive hybrid building, part grain-storage facility and part mill.

In no more than ten miles, my wife and I came to the tiny Garfield County hamlet of Antimony, pronounced AN-ti-MO-NEE, which takes its name from a “metalloid element” that’s useful as an alloy and in the making of semiconductors.

The name Antimony definitely doesn’t suggest a grain trading capital. The town is said to be so remote that it was the last in Utah to get electricity.

Nothing was moving except for a sturdy-looking man doing landscaping chores at Antimony Community Center.

“Oh, that’s Red Mill,” he said when I described the subject of my investigation. There used to be dryland wheat farming where the alfalfa is now, he said. The wheat growers gave it up after the Drought of … he couldn’t remember but reckoned the flour mill was last used sixty years ago.

Red Mill, more properly called Osiris Mill and Creamery, was built by William F. Holt, a major figure in western development projects. When he died in 1951, The New York Times declared, “WILLIAM HOLT, 87, BUILDER OF TOWNS; Developer of Resources of the Imperial Valley Dies–Work Formed Basis of Novel.” Or as the Garfield County News summarized: California’s Imperial Valley benefited from Holt’s touch.

Holt first came to Garfield County from his home in Hollywood, California in 1923. The County News lauded him:

“He was the real father of the Imperial Valley, starting work there in about 1900, at a time when there was neither water nor people in that entire country, its only inhabitants being horned toads and Gila monsters, and the turkey buzzards and crows all carried canteens.”

The News reported Holt’s initial development had started at Widstoe, namely, a power plant, a creamery, and Holt “expected to have a flour mill running in the near future.” He was president of Garfield Land Company, which operated out of a Los Angeles P.O. box. In 1926, Holt received permission from the Utah State Engineer’s Office to divert water from the east fork of the Sevier and fill a 3,000-acre-foot impoundment. The water would be used to irrigate 1,600 surface acres. Holt liked to go on about how California was becoming overcrowded and needed to import food — “everything that is suitable to be raised in this part of the country,” according to the News. He pushed for a new road between Widstoe, where his own fields were, and Escalante so that farm produce could more easily reach the Union Pacific line at Cedar City, arriving the next night in L.A.

Osiris Mill served as a granary and creamery at the now-defunct town of Osiris, named for the Egyptian deity who lorded over the underworld while also representing fertility and agriculture. Ruins on the other side of John’s Canyon road indicate the remains of Osiris. Widstoe is also characterized today as a ghost town; it was up on the plateau where I saw the irrigated fields. Widstoe and Osiris were separate by fifteen miles, and it seems safe to assume the flour mill and creamery referred to in the newspaper were the same relic we visited despite not being located at Widstoe.

Henry Bell Wright, the first American novelist to make $1 million, modeled a character on Holt in The Winning of Barbara Worth. Wright’s novel became a silent movie starring Ronald Colman, Vilma Bánky, and Gary Cooper. This Western flickered before the public in 1926, the same year the Utah Engineer’s Office awarded irrigation rights.

While time itself seems to stand still in this part of Garfield County, a full century has elapsed since the movie’s release.

The Osiris Mill and Creamery was well-crafted, which makes today’s overgrown site especially regrettable.

Despite the gunfire, our discovery of Osiris seemed heaven-sent. Even though it’s not one of Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators, we’re pleased to shine the spotlight once again on this remote wonderment.

Farmers Union decides to demolish and rebuild in 1934 at Cedar Bluffs, Nebr.

by baggyparagraphs

It was January of 1934, still the depths of the Great Depression, but optimism led the stockholders of Farmers Union Co-Operative Association, of Cedar Bluffs, Nebr., to decide the time had come to tear down and replace their old elevator. 

Organized in 1888, Farmers Union claimed to be “the oldest cooperative elevator in the United States,” according to the New Cedar Bluffs Standard weekly newspaper. There were 200 stockholders with capital stock in the total of $50,000. 

Reginald Tillotson’s neat script on the back of his photo.

At the same annual meeting, the Association announced payout of stock dividends at eight percent and patronage dividends of one percent. The newspaper remarked that “considering the times [it’s] a mighty fine showing.” 

The old elevator was to be dismantled, with as much material as possible being salvaged for re-use. The new elevator would be steel-covered. The initial report stated capacity at 80,000 bushels, which is a lot for a cribbed wooden elevator. A subsequent report put it at 30,000 bushels—a more realistic figure. 

The photo above shows the weathered main house with its peaked headhouse, and a storage annex with the upper structure enclosing the run being labeled Farmers Union Co-Op Assn. The shed on the left bears a sign saying Ash Grove Portland Cement.

A selling point on the rebuild was the prospect of local help getting employment in the construction. 

Van Ness Construction won the job, as will be seen in a follow-up post. Tillotson Construction, which evolved from Van Ness, returned to Cedar Bluffs in 1950 to build a 130,000-bushel reinforced-concrete elevator, which we visited in 2020.

Goltry hails the new grain elevator in July 6, 1939 issue of the Leader newspaper

by baggyparagraphs

Grain Building Is the Work Of Omaha Firm

One of the largest wheat crops ever yielded by this section of the northwestern Oklahoma wheat belt was dumped into Goltry’s new 60,000 bushel elevator built for the Farmers’ Exchange of Goltry by the Tillotson construction company of Omaha, Nebraska,

The construction company operated by R.O and J.H. Tillotson, brothers, designers of modern concrete buildings, both of whom were in Goltry at various times during the progress of the building, was awarded the contract March 15. Shortly afterwards a crew of local workers began digging the pit, the first step in the actual construction of the new building.

Wheat was being dumped into the elevator at a time when the harvesting of wheat in this section was only beginning while electricians and skilled workers for the construction company were giving the building its finishing touches.

After the pit had been dug, a crew of 45 men–part of them local persons–was put to work by the company. Carpenters were building slip forms into which concrete was poured. The forms were four feet in height. As concrete was poured, the forms were moved upwards.

The forms were raised with jacks of which there were 48. All 48 jacks were turned by four men. Two turns of the jack screw raised the forms an inch and the jacks were turned in almost continuous operation.

The level of the forms was checked every hour in an effort to insure absolute accuracy. The Tillotson construction company used a new style of checking device in their job here. The company already had used five different kinds of checking devices during its various construction jobs. Employees of the company reported that the new device was the most accurate they had yet used.

The forms were raised an average of six feet every 10 hours. In the new checking device, targets were used in measuring distances with plumbs to keep the forms absolutely level all the way around at all times during their progress upwards.

The new style of checking system was not designed and made available until a short time previous to the date upon which the company began the Goltry job.

Before superintendent W.B. Morris, whose home is in Kansas City, left the job, 150,000 bushels of wheat had been put through the elevator. More than 85 carloads had been loaded from the elevator before Morris left. Each carload amounts to an average of 1,800 bushels. The machinery and equipment in the elevator were operating perfectly before the last of the company’s workers and the superintendent left the job.

“Everything ran smoothly with never a touch of trouble,” Morris, superintendent of the Goltry job for the Tillotson construction company, said.

A large amount of the responsibility for seeing that the day by day progress of the building was not interrupted at any time was delegated to Morris. However, Morris gave a great deal of the credit to the entire group of workers which included a number of local men. Morris said his company had “the best cooperation among the men working for us. We appreciate the interest shown by the people of the community and the efforts the men put forth endeavoring to keep the job going at the proper speed at all times,” Morris said.

The new elevator is 120 feet from the bottom of the basement to the top. The basement is four feet below the ground level and seven and a half feet below the floor. The capacity is 60,000 bushels.

A truck lift on the first floor of the elevator picks up trucks with ease in the process of dumping grain from the trucks into the pits. The new style of truck lift will not catch the radiator or damage the truck in any way.

Two pits into which grain is dumped hold 1,200 bushels. The first pit holds 850, the second 450.

Legs motivate the belt and cups and such a speed that the grain is elevated upwards into the bins at a rate of 60 bushels per minute.

At the top of the building, an automatic scale dumps 60 bushels per minute. The scale hold 10 bushels and automatically drops six times per minute.

A blowing system cleans wheat and sends the dust and chaff and foreign particles down a chute and into a compartment just above the first floor. At intervals this compartment is dumped into a truck and hauled away.

A fast cage type man lift–one of the fastest man lifts to be found in an elevator of the size of the new Goltry building–hoists the workers upward to the top of the building at a time saving rate of speed.

Among the various types of men working on the job–of which there were as many as 45 at the time the crew was running slip forms–were electricians, concrete workers, steel men, jack men, hoisting engineer, concrete mixer operator, finishers who smoothed the walls and the floors, painters, buggy men and wheel barrow men.

Front page caption:

Goltry’s new modern elevator building (above), built for the Farmers’ Exchange of Goltry by the Tillotson construction company of Omaha, Nebraska, is 120 feet in height, rising 116 feet above the ground level and falling four feet below the level of the ground. The capacity of the new building is 60,000 bushels and its modern machinery and equipment, all brand new, enable the operators of the Farmers’ Exchange to dump grain into the pit, elevate it, clean it with a modern blowing system, weigh it and load it into waiting box cars as rapidly as modern high speed trucks can bring it in. Photo exclusively for The Goltry Leader by Cochrane commercial photographers.

Inside page caption:

Approaching Goltry from the west a person would be afforded this view of the new Farmers’ Exchange elevator building (above) towering 116 feet toward the sky, its smooth, white walls reflecting with added brilliance the dazzling rays of the midsummer, afternoon sun. (Photo exclusively for The Goltry Leader by Cochrane commercial photographers).

An Iowa company built an elevator in Ceresco, Neb., imitating Tillotson’s style

by baggyparagraphs

For a small eastern Nebraska town, Ceresco is well-known within its region because of a furniture store, Ernie’s in Ceresco, that advertises widely.

When Kate Oshima visited Ernie’s to look for bargains, she happened to notice a handsome grain elevator with a curved headhouse.

At first we wondered if this was an unrecorded project by Tillotson Construction Co.

But Kate got a photo of a manhole cover that tells otherwise: Grain Storage Construction Co., of Council Bluffs, Iowa, takes credit for the 1959 job.

We find no background information on this company.

But the curved headhouse makes us wonder if Tillotson design talent migrated across the Missouri River to Omaha’s twin city and worked there.

Tillotson’s construction record ends at 1955. From the accompanying photos taken by Kate, this elevator’s style sure looks familiar.

 

In 1940, Bernard Blubaugh prepared the Clyde Co-op’s Medford, Okla., location for a concrete elevator

by baggyparagraphs

The Clyde (Okla.) Co-operative Association filed its 21st-annual report in 1940 and listed Bernard Blubaugh (seen above) as general manager of its Medford operation.

The report named the nine directors:

L.E. Melka, President

B.F. Cline, Vice president

Otto Zeman, Secretary

C.E. Clark, Mike Hein, E.J. Best, J.R. Skalnik, C.S. Shellhammer, and Louis Droselmeyer, directors

Stogie in hand, Bernard Blubaugh walks an elevator site. Photos courtesy of the Blubaugh Archive.

Employees were O.L. Sturtz, local manager, Clyde; Phil Kenny, local manager, Renfrow; Lewis Dahlen, local manager, Deer Creek; E.L. Hampton, local manager, Nardin; Gary Cassingham, local manager, Salt Fork; Evelyn Dillon, bookkeeper, Medford; Elmer Huffman, elevator, Medford; Robert Wharry, gasoline and oil, Medford; Carl Dahlen, gasoline and oil, Clyde; Irvin Dester, gasoline and oil, Deer Creek.

Another co-op record shows that Tillotson Construction Co., of Omaha, was already familiar with the co-op. On March 11, 1936, the company was awarded the contract to build an elevator at Clyde. This would have been a wooden elevator: their first concrete elevator was in 1939 at Goltry.

The bid was $10,950. Two weeks later the company came back to the co-op board with a request.

“Tillotson ask if we would reconsider as he had left out $3,335 labor bill,” the record says. “Board did reconsider.”

And Tillotson went on to do additional, significant work for the Clyde Co-op, building the 212,000-bushel elevator of reinforced concrete at Medford in 1941. Presumably, the bid included labor costs on that one.

 

A distressed, robotized Tillotson elevator awaiting rescue by Hercules in Wahoo, Neb.

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

We wanted terrific in Wahoo. The fifth and final stop on our Jan. 2 road trip in eastern Nebraska called for it, in keeping with the unusual name of the seat of Saunders County and the town’s colorful history. We are told “wahoo” is taken from a shrub, the eastern wahoo (Euonymous atropurpureus), and the name was also given to a navy sub, the USS Wahoo. 

An icon for Nebraska 2020 road tripWahoo happens to have produced more than its share of notability. Wahoo Sam Crawford twirled his way into baseball’s Hall of Fame. Howard Hanson composed his way to a Pulitzer Prize. Darryl F. Zanuck swept up three Academy Awards. Geneticist George Beadle shared a Nobel and took over Chicago U. 

There must be something in the water: Wahoo had fewer than 3,000 people until after World War Two. A greater concentration of talent, where?

Electrodes on the brain.

Tillotson Construction Co. built a 150,000-bushel, single-leg concrete elevator there in 1950.

I had passed through Wahoo many times without understanding the elevator’s provenance and would not have thought to see Tillotson embossed on the manhole covers.

Notes in the construction record say our Wahoo house followed the busy year’s Imo, Okla., plan. It means five grand tanks of 16 feet in diameter and 120 feet in height. There’s a 13 x 17-foot center driveway, and the note says, “Split 4 bins over Dr.” 

Construction consumed 1,492 tons of reinforced concrete, 40 tons of plain concrete for the hoppers, and 72.34 tons of steel. 

The slab, 21 inches of reinforced thickness, covered 54 x 51 feet.

  • Pit depth: 15 feet 9 inches.
  • Structure rating: 8,216 tons. 
  • Curve of cupola: 22 1/4 feet wide, 42 1/2 feet long, 26 1/2 feet high. 

Our excitement soon diminished on seeing the subject and its neglect. What a shame to Wahoo. The use as an antenna tower is a terrible disappointment.

Things could be fixed up in a cute robotic way. Lay out a note of history, then rachet up each paying guest in the manlift, serving Wahoo wine on the dining deck. Block the wind and electromagnetic radiation, and it’s a regional phenomenon. People will come all the way from Loup City.

We visited late Saturday. The taverns had filled. Naught else moved. We extracted no information and must imagine circumstances of the elevator’s degradation. 

Wahoo produces all-stars, but the big star amidst, is disheveled and in duress. Like Prometheus, bound to a rock, an eagle preying his liver, Tillotson’s Wahoo house awaits Hercules.

Before Prometheus could be freed, he received a visit from straying Io, garbed as “a most lovely white heifer.” She recognized him, saying: 

You–he who succored the whole race of men? 

You, that Prometheus, the daring, the enduring? 

Tillotson Construction had a wet time of it when building at David City in 1951

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

“Wet pit,” notes the Tillotson Construction Co. record in its details of the David City job of 1951.

An icon for Nebraska 2020 road tripA Tillotson crew put up a single-leg, 180,000-bushel, reinforced-concrete elevator in the seat of Butler County during one of the wettest periods ever recorded in the prairie region.

“Most of Kansas and Missouri as well as large portions of Nebraska and Oklahoma had monthly precipitation totaling 200 percent of normal in May, 300 percent in June, and 400 percent in July of 1951,” says a report by the National Weather Service.

But the work went on. The new David City elevator was built on an original plan with five tanks, or silos, of 18 feet in diameter and rising 120 feet. There was a 13 by 17-foot center driveway, eight bins over the drive, and a total of 15 bins and overflow. “Dust Bin @ Ext.” observes a further note.

The elevator required 1,716 cubic yards of reinforced concrete, 20 yards of plain concrete for hoppers, and 81.16 tons of rebar.

The 21-inch-thick main slab extended over 60 by 55 feet, covering an area (“Act. Outside on Ground”) of 3,057 square feet. It sat over a 17-foot-deep pit. The design incorporated a full basement.

The slab supported 3,513 tons of reinforced concrete and 40 tons of plain concrete. With grain weighing 60 pounds per bushel, there was capacity for 5,400 tons of grain. Along with structural steel and machinery as well as hoppers, the the elevator was rated at 9,458 tons total loaded weight.

An elegant rounded cupola, or headhouse, sat atop the tanks. Its dimension were 19 feet wide, 38 feet long, and 27 1/3 feet high. With the moderately tall cupola and moderately deep pit, the centers of the leg’s head and boot pulleys were 154.83 feet apart.

The pulleys were 72 x 14 x 2 3/16 inches (boot) and 72 x 14 x 3 5/16 (head) and turned the at 42 revolutions per minute.

Calumet supplied the 330-inch, six-ply belt that was 14 inches wide. Cups of 12 x 6 inches were spaced at nine-inch intervals.

A 30-horsepower Howell motor delivered a theoretical leg capacity of 7,140 bushels per hours. Operating at 80 percent, it needed 27.6 hp to deliver actual capacity of 5,700 bushels per hour.

A 1.5-hp motor ran the manlift. The truck lift operated with a 7.5-hp Ehrsam motor.

A further note indicates, “300 Bu. Dryer Split Bin #7 for Dryer.”

Twin David City elevators but only one curved headhouse to mark a Tillotson design

by baggyparagraphs

View of David City grain elevators

By Ronald Ahrens

David City, a gorgeous town of about 2,900 people and the seat of Butler County, is unapologetically named for David Butler, the state of Nebraska’s first governor (1867 to 1871) and the only one to date ever to be impeached. It was alleged that he had used school funds to engage in property speculation when he moved the capital from Omaha to Lincoln. The state legislature reviewed the impeachment in 1877 and expunged it from the record.

An icon for Nebraska 2020 road trip

Founded right in the middle of all this controversy, in 1873, David City has a large courthouse square with streets wide enough for islands of parked cars in the middle of the pavement. There is also an impressive municipal park at the south edge of this splendid burg.

Even before our visit on a clear but chilly January afternoon, I had been to David City many times to visit the Horaceks–my aunt, uncle, and cousins on my father’s side of the family. In the summer of 1966, when I was 11 years old, I spent a week with them. Having just acquired a transistor radio as a premium for my work selling magazine subscriptions in the National Youth Sales Club, I spent quite a bit of time walking up and down the sidewalk groovin’ to “Bus Stop,” by the Hollies and “Summer in the City,” by the Lovin’ Spoonful. Omaha was 65 miles away, but station KOIL (“Mighty 1290”) came through just fine even in the daytime.

At the end of my visit I rode the bus back to the big city. We stopped in the village of Brainard with time to look around, so I went into a pharmacy and bought an affordable gift for my mother, a small jar of Vaseline, which seemed practical and useful. She was, as one might suppose, nonplused. 

In all my visits to David City, it never occurred to me that my Grandfather Reginald Tillotson, on my mother’s side, had built there. But records of Tillotson Construction Co. show a 180,000-bushel elevator in 1951, and the purpose of our present visit was to study it.

There are two concrete elevators on the Frontier Cooperative site along the tracks at the southwestern edge of town. Each one has a related flat-storage building. Our problem lay in determining which was the 1951 job and whether the second structure was also by Tillotson. Even with zoom photos of the manhole covers over openings in the tanks, or silos, there’s nothing conclusive to share. The rusty cast-iron plates bear the imprint the Hutchinson Foundry & Steel Co., a regular Tillotson supplier, but because the manholes are so high off the ground, and the plates are rusty, I’ve been unable to read the remaining lettering at bottom. 

Nevertheless, the north elevator is elegantly crowned with a curved cupola, the Tillotson signature headhouse that was perfected by about 1950. Dimensions are 19 feet wide, 38 feet long, and 27 1/3 feet high. Built on an original plan with five tanks rising 120 feet, this elevator has a 13 by 17-foot driveway. Other external features such as doorways with lintels and external lamps are very much in the Tillotson style. 

The question then is about the south elevator. It has a stepped, rectangular headhouse. Who built this elevator and when?

Both headhouses are labeled “Farmers Co-Op Grain Co.” An explanation is given on Frontier’s website: “Over the years, the predecessors of both Frontier and Midwest (Cooperative) completed many mergers and acquisitions, growing their territories across southern and central Nebraska. The Frontier name came into being in 1990, following the merger of Farmers Cooperative Co. of Brainard with Farmers Union Cooperative of Mead.”

A 2015 news report says Farmers Cooperative purchased the David City elevators in 1985.

Deeper insight into the history comes from the State Elevator News roundup in the June 1919 edition of The Co-Operative Manager and Farmer: “Wells Howe has resigned his position as manager of the Nye-Schneider-Fowler Elevator in David City, his resignation to take effect as soon as his successor has been secured. Mr. Howe has been connected with the company fourteen years, and with the David City Elevator eleven years.” 

A note on the Nebraska Memories page of the state’s official site says Nye Schneider Fowler Co., of Fremont, “was organized in 1902 as successor to the former grain and lumber business, Nye Schneider Company. Frank Fowler joined Ray Nye and Rudolf B. Schneider as a named partner.” 

The elevators show scars from hard use, with spalling on the exterior walls and no recent whitewashing, but evidently they remain in good operating order.

As it was Saturday afternoon when we visited, no one was around the facility. There was only a grain dryer’s roar, even stronger than that of the wind: it must be a curse for people in the nearby houses. 

New 320,000-bushel Tillotson elevator ready for Texas Panhandle harvest of 1950

by baggyparagraphs

Canyon (Tex.) News, March 2, 1950 

The Consumers Fuel Association in Canyon has let the contract for the construction of a 320,000 bushel grain elevator in Canyon. The above is a picture of the new construction, which will be completed in time for the 1950 wheat harvest. The building will be west of the old elevator.