In Chase County, we meet Gary State, an elevator construction veteran

By Gary Rich

Editor’s note: Gary is recently returned from a fact-finding foray in Nebraska.

I stopped at the Chase County courthouse in Imperial, Neb., looking for the dates when the elevators were built in Imperial, Enders, and Wauneta. They did not have much information about the build dates. The only info they have in their records is that the old office building for Frenchman Valley Co-op was done in 1946. The FVC built a new office across the street from the old one.

The ladies on the courthouse staff told me to stop in at the FVC office and talk with Gary State, who might have the dates. Mr. State went to work for Mid States building grain elevators and feed plants. I do not know if it was just Mid States or Mid States Construction. He was living in Imperial when he started working for them.

I explained about Tillotson Construction Company, of Omaha, J.H. Tillotson, Contractor, of Denver, and Mayer-Osborn Company. He gave me some leads. He told me that Hugh O’Grady is still alive and lives in Omaha. Mid States was started by a man name Erickson. He had seven sons. Six of the sons ended up working for Mid States. One son died at a construction site. He said Jack Russell was a superintendent. He thought that he was living in Seward, Neb.

Mr. State built the second annex, or elevator number two, at Big Springs, and then elevator number three.

He told me that he built the Woolstock, and Goldfield, Iowa, elevators; the feed plant at Fruita, Colo.; and elevators at Garrison and nearby David City, Neb. At the other end of the Cornhusker State, he built the west elevator in Imperial. After the west elevator was finished, he left Mid States and he went to work for the Co-op. This is the reason that he is working for FVC.

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Okay, here is another thing. I thought that when a construction company built an elevator that they did everything. This is not true. Mr. State told me about a company based at York, Neb. This company did all the belts inside the elevators, all around Nebraska, no matter who the builder was. So we know the belts were installed by a separate company. Now I am wondering if a separate company was onsite to install the leg as they built the elevator up. Or did the general contractor install the leg?

Tillotson Construction completes Big Springs sorghum plant (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)
Mysteries surround the origin of Mayer-Osborn Company and its first elevator (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)
Details of the Kanorado, Kansas, elevator by J.H. Tillotson, Contractor (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)

Greenwood elevator welcomes 250 at open house

Mar6 by baggyparagraphs

Photo by Kristen Osborn Cart

GREENWOOD (Nebr.)–The Farmers Union Cooperative Association held open house at the new concrete elevator which has capacity for 128,000 bushels of grain. Manager Floyd H. Gove and assistant M.L. Griffith conducted 250 through the plant. Doughnuts, cookies and coffee were served in the basement.Farmers’ Elevator Guide, November 1951

Open house to welcome Tillotson Construction’s large elevator at Rock Valley (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)

Approval and completion of a concrete elevator in Pocahontas, Iowa

Mar5 by baggyparagraphs

POCAHONTAS–The Farmers’ Cooperative Elevator has approved final plans for construction of a 250,000 bushel storage plant. The new elevator will consist of eight tanks, 20 feet in diameter and 120 feet high with a cupola to project more than 20 feet above the tanks. Each of 17 bins will hold about 15,000 bushels. Their present elevator has a capacity of 60,000 bushels while the Havelock branch elevator holds 40,000. The new plant should be finished about Sept. 1.Farmers’ Elevator Guide, June 1949

POCAHONTAS–The New 250,000-bushel concrete elevator which cost the Farmers Cooperative association $125,000 is completely filled with soybeans stored for customers and corn stored for the government. The structure is 120 feet high. The Pocahontas cooperative, one of the leading groups in northwest Iowa, plans to build a new truck scale, a new office and a new (illegible) house next spring.Farmers’ Elevator Guide, December 1949

Note: Tillotson Construction Company worker Larry Ryan fell to his death here in 1954.

Big Springs adds 320,000-bushel storage elevator

Mar1 by baggyparagraphs

Photo by Kristen Osborn Cart

BIG SPRINGS–Work on the 320,000-bushel storage elevator is about completed here, giving the Farmers Cooperative Elevator Association of Denver, Colo., a plant with 20 bins, 130-feet high. The elevator with headhouse is 165 feet high. The building is concrete.

Farmers’ Elevator Guide, September 1951

Note: It isn’t known at the time of this posting which construction company did the project.

Tillotson Construction completes Big Springs sorghum plant (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)

Tillotson Construction completes Big Springs sorghum plant

Feb29 by baggyparagraphs

Photo courtesy of Farmers Elevator Coop Association

BIG SPRINGS–The Tillotson Construction Co., Hastings, Neb., has completed a $40,000 building for the Farmers Cooperative Elevator sorghum plant.

Farmers’ Elevator Guide, August 1951

Note: A conversation today with Larry McCroden, long-time manager of the Big Springs Farmers Coop Elevator, reveals additional information about the facilities. Mr. McCroden consulted tax documents that showed “Elevator A” had a value of $184,432 and “Elevator B” had a value of $25,100. He said the twenty original bins of Elevator A stand about 115 feet tall, and the two-tiered headhouse reaches to 170 feet. The documents give January 15, 1951 as the date of service for the two.

Later additions were made to the original structure, increasing storage capacity by hundreds of thousands of bushels.

Mr. MrCroden said the elevator at Roggen, Colorado, bears many similarities to Big Springs.

Additional note: We don’t know why Hastings, Nebraska is given as the location of Tillotson Construction Co., which had its headquarters in Omaha.

One of Tillotson’s biggest elevators under way in Dallas Center (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)

Tillotson gets 50,000-bushel Paullina elevator under way

Feb28 by baggyparagraphs

Paullina elevator complex, Dec. 9, 2009, by Jim Hamann

PAULLINA (IOWA)–A new concrete elevator is under construction to replace the Paullina Grain Co. elevator destroyed by fire. The new one will be 103 feet high, containing 18 bins. All new machinery, including a 50-ton scale, will be installed. Capacity will be 50,000 bushels.

Farmers’ Elevator Guide, June 1949

Men wanted in Paullina, Iowa, by Tillotson Construction in 1949 (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)

Government price supports, loan guarantees led to proliferating grain elevators

Feb24 by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

I see why grain elevators proliferated like mad–like mice, actually–starting in 1949.

This happened before Ezra Taft Benson, the crusader against Socialism, became Secretary of Agriculture in 1953, so the trend can’t be attributed to Mormon food-hoarding instincts in the face of Doomsday.

Here’s the story: Section 417 of the Agricultural Act of 1949 made an extra $8 million in cheap loans available to farmers’ cooperatives through the Commodity Credit Corporation.

Ezra Taft Benson, Ag Chief

The United States Department of Agriculture figured the private sector wasn’t keeping pace in grain storage as farmers realized increasingly bountiful crop yields. The USDA stepped in to provide the incentive to build storage capacity. The government price supports had resulted in hundreds of millions of bushels going nowhere.

Washington’s policy of building “warehouse” capacity was of enormous benefit to established outfits like Tillotson Construction Company and J.H. Tillotson, Contractor. For the principals, like my grandfather, Reginald O. Tillotson, it became a matter of dashing between farflung towns in order to make his sales pitch. And the CCC also breathed life into new organizations like Mayer-Osborn Company.

Given certain conditions, the loans–which were extended through the government’s Banks for Cooperatives–were intended to cover up to eighty percent of construction costs, with the rest funded by local sources. The eighty percent would cover $100,000 of what looks like an average cost of $125,000 around then, so we’re talking about eighty new elevators in a year’s time.

And that’s in addition to what supposedly would’ve been ordered in normal periods, although who would turn down a government subsidy and pay retail?

Indeed, I’ve already heard one story of a group forming, with maybe five businessmen kicking in $5000 each, to take up the government’s kind offer, not caring about the disposition of the grain after the three-year guarantee (on new storage) ended.

The CCC pledged it would use seventy-five percentof the additional capacity. And farmers were lining up to sell to the CCC. Indeed, build it and they will come. The more of the subsidized canisters that the government provided, the more that was needed.

United States Department of Agriculture

“The possibility that 1950 will present another storage crisis is evidenced by the latest report of the Department of Agriculture, which shows that as of Nov. 1, farmers had put approximately 353,746,480 bushels of 1949-crop[s] … under CCC price support,” reported the Farmers’ Elevator Guide in December of 1949. “This was nearly 100,000,000 bushels more than with 1948-crop produce.”

Meanwhile, the government had frozen construction of commercial buildings other than hospitals, churches, and schools. So while the traditional construction companies were fighting over those slim pickins, the Tillotsons and Mayer-Osborn, with their specialized knowledge in shaping, reinforcing, and pouring concrete, dashed back and forth like bees, covering the land from Alberta to South Carolina.

They knocked together slip-forms and jacked their way up beyond 100 feet, grinning the whole way.

Government loans, subsidies led to elevator construction boom in 1940s and 1950s (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)
Tillotson Construction hurries to meet deadline in Aurora, Nebraska (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)

One of Tillotson’s biggest elevators under way in Dallas Center

Feb21 by baggyparagraphs

Photo by Don McLaughlin on April 11, 2010. Click on the photo to visit his photostream.

DALLAS CENTER–Work has started on a 250,000-bushel concrete elevator for Dallas Center Farmers Cooperative Company. It will be 166 feet tall and is being built by Tillotson Construction Company at a cost of $151,000.

Located west of the firm’s south elevator, it is 56×70 in base dimensions.

Aeration equipment will be included in each of the ten 23,000-bushel bins, Manager Don Brown reports.

Farmers’ Elevator Guide, circa September 1955

Photo by Pete Zarria, April 1, 2011. Click the image to visit his photostream.

See another recent images from Dallas Center:

January 7, 2012

Boxholm manager foresees timely completion of Tillotson Construction’s new elevator (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)

Boxholm manager foresees timely completion of Tillotson’s new elevator

Feb17 by baggyparagraphs

Photo uploaded to KCCI in 2009 by the station's u local contributor hmuench

Boxholm, Iowa–Manager Bud Lane reported that the new 200,000-bushel Farmers Cooperative Elevator Company’s concrete elevator will be completed on July 15. Tillotson Construction Co. of Omaha is the builder.

The structure will rise 150 feet with storage tanks standing 120 feet high.

The firm will have 256,000 bushels of space with the new unit.

Farmers’ Elevator Guide, 1954-1955 library volume

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Note: The Boxholm Farmer’s elevator was founded in 1900, according to a 2004 article in the Dayton Review. On October 25, 2004, the elevator–now expanded–took in 145,422 bushels of grain, the new single-day record at this location. For the entire 2004 harvest season, more than 2 million bushes were taken in.

On November 16, 2009, two workers were injured when a grain dryer exploded at the Boxholm elevator. See the report from Des Moines station KCCI.

Boxholm is in northwestern Boone County, Iowa.

Tillotson Construction’s Ralston, Iowa, project ‘progressing nicely’ in 1939 (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)

Tillotson Construction hurries to meet deadline in Aurora, Nebraska

Feb15 by baggyparagraphs

Photo by David Wilson

Contracts for new elevators at Aurora and Murphy were let by the Aurora Cooperative Elevator Co. The Aurora 250,000-bushel concrete elevator will be built by Tillotson Construction Co. of Omaha. The 33,000-bushel plant at Murphy will be erected by Black, Sivalls & Bryson, Kansas City, Mo., bolted steel tank construction company. The cooperative has a government contract to store grains for three years and the elevators must be completed by September 15 to meet terms of the contracts. The Murphy elevator will be in use by mid-July.

Farmers’ Elevator Guide, July 1950

By January of 1955, it was reported that the co-op was operating a new, 271,000-bushel addition built by Tillotson, bringing overall capacity to 551,000 bushels.

Open house to welcome Tillotson Construction’s large elevator at Rock Valley (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)

Our Grandfathers' Grain Elevators

The men and women of slip-formed concrete and the buildings they created in North America

Category Archives: Tillotson Construction Company