Building a mighty elevator required specialized carpentry and subtle touches

Editor’s note: Here, Charles J. Tillotson offers additional explanation about the formwork at the start of the Flagler, Colo., annex, seen in this 1953 photo from Tillotson Construction Company archives.

All new lumber was used, the amount of which I couldn’t give any idea but it was a few truckloads at minimum.

The curved lumber was done by hand, either with a table saw or a Skilsaw or both. The notches, of course–for example at the jack yoke locations–were again cut in the field.

Mucho carpentry work, the length of which depended on the number of carpenters that could be scrounged up.

Also, the superintendent of the job was usually out of the carpentry world and could pitch in as needed during form construction.

And there remains one more point to make about the photo from a previous post, “Taking it from the top at Tillotson Construction’s annex in Flagler, Colo.” (use the link that’s included below or click on the photo to see an enlarged version).

The dark shadow around the circular bin forms is the residue from “washing down the side.” (This is the side where the cement will be poured.)

The formwork was coated with used motor oil or some other type of lubrication.

Doing so made the formboards moisture resistant and let them more easily slip upward with less friction.

Taking it from the top at Tillotson Construction’s annex in Flagler, Colorado (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)
Linking together preassembled formwork came after pouring an elevator’s slab (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)

Mystery elevator identified as Mayer-Osborn’s Cordell, Oklahoma project

Apr3 by kocart

William Osborn photo provided by his granddaughter Diane Osborn Bell.

By Kristen Cart

This photograph has left us scratching our heads for over a year. Gary Rich knew of no such elevator from all of his travels, so he rummaged through his photographs for any hint of it. He looked for an elevator with a single bin-width and two driveways, with a curve of track and a second elevator around the bend, all to no avail. The photo sat in my files waiting for serendipity to step in. Sometimes, it is best to bide your time, and if you are lucky you get more than a location and a name. We hit the jackpot in this case.

When Dad and I visited his first cousin, we sorted through boxes of hundred-year-old family pictures. Midway through the second box, we found a newspaper clipping about an elevator, with a photo I instantly recognized. There it was, plain as day.

This unique elevator was built in Cordell, Okla., a town almost directly south of Wichita, Kan., well within the territory served by Mayer-Osborn Construction. The superintendent on the job was Ed Christoffersen, brother-in-law to my grandfather William Osborn.

In this photo by Joy Franklin, you can see two driveways, built for faster grain loading during harvest. The curve of train track is evident here.

After making the identification, I looked online and found Expedition Oklahoma, where Joy Franklin posted a beautiful current photo of the elevator. With her kind permission, it is posted below. She said the elevator is owned by the Wheeler Brothers Grain Company, founded in 1917, which presently owns eighteen grain elevators. It is a happy surprise to see that one of Mayer-Osborn’s most innovative elevators not only survives, but is still in use today.

Gordon, Nebraska’s elevator was built in a classic Mayer-Osborn style (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)
History is preserved in pictures at St. Francis, Kansas (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)

Linking together preassembled formwork came after pouring an elevator’s slab

Apr1 by baggyparagraphs

Initial formwork for new grain bins at Flagler in 1953.

Initial formwork for Tillotson Construction’s new annex of grain bins at Flagler, Colo., in 1953.

Editor’s note: The following explanation by Charles J. Tillotson helps to answer the question of how a grain elevator is built.

The excavation you see in the picture was dug for the foundation and floor slab of the annex at Flagler. Once the slab is poured, the forms that have been built are moved onto the slab where further carpentry is used to connect all the formwork together and construct the supplemental formwork such as horizontal ribs, jack yokes, et cetera, to make an integral form, all assembled into a uniform unit and capped entirely with a walking deck, also of wood.

Oftentimes the job site did not lend itself to building the major portion of the formwork simultaneously with the excavating and placement of the foundation (lack of space, topography, et cetera). So all of the formwork had to be built in place after the new floor was poured, which slowed the construction time of the overall build-out of the elevator.

Taking it from the top at Tillotson Construction’s annex in Flagler, Colorado (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)

Taking it from the top at Tillotson Construction’s annex in Flagler, Colorado

Mar29 by baggyparagraphs

This photo from the Tillotson Construction Company archives shows the staging deck, on which all formwork was built to ensure it was dead level. The square section was probably the form for a conveyor or bucket shaft, or for a man lift. The triangular section, called a groin form, was made for the void where two rows of bin forms were placed together. The excavation hole for the new annex is seen, lower left, at the foot of the 252,000-bushel elevator the company built in 1950, modeling it after their one in Pond Creek, Okla.

By Ronald Ahrens

In 1953, my grandfather Reginald Tillotson decided to send his three sons, Charles, 18, Tim, 16, and Mike, 13, to work on an annex to the Flagler, Colo., elevator Tillotson Construction Company had built three years earlier.

My grandmother Margaret didn’t like the idea.”You can’t send those kids out there,” she protested.

“It’s about time they grew up,” Reginald said.

Indeed, my uncles were sent, leaving Omaha in a new Ford and pulling the travel trailer that would be their home for the next few weeks.

“I don’t remember that he even came out,” Uncle Tim said recently of Reginald.

From left, Tim and Chuck Tillotson and La Rose Tillotson Hunt in 2012.

While Charles and Tim labored on the formwork that rose toward the sky, Mike stayed in the trailer, which doubled as their bunkhouse and the job office. His task was that of timekeeper.

“I don’t recall him bein’ out there when we was jackin’ and pourin’, jackin’ and pourin,'” Tim said, although he did recall him reading hot rod magazines.

Once the pouring started, it couldn’t stop. A cold joint between concrete that had already set and a new pour wasn’t at all desirable, for it would leak.

“You had to treat that damn good when you started over,” Tim said.

Work went on in twelve-hour shifts. As the concrete was dumped out of a Georgia buggy–a V-shaped tub riding on large wheels behind a U-shaped handle–someone with a spud hoe would follow the pour and work the concrete, releasing the air from around the rebar. “The only way you shut down was an emergency,” Tim said. Lightning, for example, was an emergency because it was attracted to the rebar being used to bolster the concrete.

The crew was made up of some trusted old hands and an assortment of locals. “You never knew who you were workin’ next to,” Tim said.

He remembers the local sheriff asking himself why he should put up anyone in the jail when they could work and earn their keep. One of the convicts toiling alongside Tim had a funny thought. “You think you can hang onto that hoist handle hard enough if I push you off?” he said.

Any number of mishaps could occur. “You ought to see one of them Georgia buggies go off the top,” Tim said. “Or the cotter pin come off the wheel and the wheel go off.”

At ground level the pour was made in six-inch increments, but the speed increased as the elevator rose.

To keep the screw jacks on the same plane and maintain plumb, the crew used a water-level system on the deck. A clear hose was fed by water from a 55-gallon drum. Tim said the hose had a level “that you marked before you ever pulled off the ground. And believe it or not, you’d get one hundred and some feet up, and you’d be plumb!”

How we know Tillotson Construction built the Burlington, Colorado, grain elevator (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)
In 1946, Tillotson Construction built a mighty elevator in Kingfisher, Oklahoma (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)

Tillotson Construction’s signature, the curved headhouse, was a practical matter

Mar25 by baggyparagraphs

The main house of Tillotson Construction’s elevator at Dike, Iowa, built in 1946 (annex, left, 1949), is crowned by a rectilinear headhouse.

In this post, Charles J. Tillotson explains how his father, Reginald Tillotson, president of Tillotson Construction Company, developed the curved headhouse design.

It would be nice to say that the curved walls were created by Dad for aesthetic reasons and leave it at that.

However, a number of factors actually influenced the design, those being:

Re-use of the curved yokes (the horizontal framework supporting the vertical forms used during slip-form construction of the storage bins).
Building square corners into concrete slip-form construction proved to be more difficult than curved corners.
Placing horizontal reinforcing steel for square corners entailed bending it at a ninety-degree angle and then manhandling it into position, whereas with the curved forms, the horizontal reinforcing steel could be inserted much easier by sliding it into position.

Tillotson’s Aurora, Neb., elevator, built in 1950, has a curved headhouse.

For numbers two and three above, keep in mind that all horizontal reinforcing steel, or rebar, was placed by hand (anywhere from twelve to sixteen inches) during the slip-form process, all while the forms were being slipped vertically by screw jacks.

The horizontal steel had to be placed rather quickly throughout the entire structure, so that the steel bars were approximately in alignment from the beginning of placement throughout the structure and back to the beginning point.

On large projects, steel placement was divided into segments with a team captain in charge of each, and all captains would then synchronize their start times for installing the rebar.

Slip-form construction involves a great deal of detailed labor to carry out specific functions while the forms are being jacked vertically in constant motion. It used to be about five to six inches per hour.

In 1946, Tillotson Construction built a mighty elevator in Kingfisher, Oklahoma (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)
Elevator work included a quick and painful education in the use of a chain fall (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)

Iowan Frank Nine recalls working for Tillotson Construction in the mid-1950s

Mar22 by baggyparagraphs

This photo showing the aftermath of a grain dryer explosion at the Boxholm elevator was uploaded to KCCI by u local contributor hmuench.

This 2009 photo showing the aftermath of a grain dryer explosion at Tillotson’s Boxholm elevator was uploaded to KCCI by u local contributor hmuench.

The following two-part memoir was recently written by Frank Nine, who worked for Tillotson Construction Company in 1954 and 1955 and now lives near Sedalia, Missouri:

I first worked for Tillotson in Dayton, Iowa. Jay Wiser was superviser. We finished there and moved to Bancroft, Iowa, and finished late-fall 1954.

Frank Nine is seen in this recent photo.

Frank Nine, in a recent photo.

Early 1955 we started the Boxholm elevator, where I was from. G.T. Christensen, Jay Wiser, and I became friends and often hung out together when not working. I attended George’s funeral. I was 19 at the time. We went to Dallas Center, Iowa. George’s wife and family [lived] for some time in Boxholm. I later helped her with some minor repair, etc, on their trailerhouse. The children were very young then.

I am now 77 years old.

♦ ♦ ♦

I started out on the tractor-loader filling the hopper for the cement mixer. Some as carpenter helper, on-deck pouring cement, and most of time wherever needed. This was in Dayton, Iowa.

Jay Wiser’s brother–Bud is what they called him, I think Harold was his name–was foreman or boss.

Then we moved to Bancroft, Iowa, where Jay was supervisor, his brother Jesse was a foreman, and George T. Christensen was also.

I worked with Bobby Wheeler and his brother Billy. (I think that was his name.) Also with Jerry Gustafson and his dad and a man they called Cowboy. I think Carlson was his last name.

Bobby and I were friends and hung out often. Jerry and I did the same.

We finished job October-November 1954. Early 1955 we started the job in Boxholm, Iowa, where I met Jim Sheets, and we became friends. I worked the master jacks and run jack crew. Later on, finished cement with Jim–among other jobs as needed. This is where George, Jay, and an old welder, Jesse, became friends.

Bobby, Jerry, Jim, George, Jay, Jesse, and others hung out often. We lost George this year.

‘Walking the plank’ on the new Pocahontas, Iowa, elevator in 1954 (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)
Taking it from the top at Tillotson Construction’s annex in Flagler, Colorado (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)

Kingfisher Co-op documented the sequence of its elevators in a 1984 history

Mar13 by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

Thanks to Linda at Plains Partners, in Kingfisher, Okla., we have pages from the special 50-year-history edition of The Co-op Way, published by the Kingfisher Cooperative Elevator Association in 1984.

The history reports what happened only twelve years after the co-op was incorporated. Because of postwar expansion “the need to build a new elevator was obvious,” the history says.

The co-op chose Tillotson Construction, of Omaha, for the job.

First, however, the co-op reincorporated early in 1946 to increase its capital.

Work soon got under way when “the association wrecked the old 34,000 bu. elevator and built a new concrete elevator with a 250,000 bu. capacity,” the history says.

“They also wrecked all the other old buildings except the office and scale house which they had built in 1942. It was remodeled into a concrete cleaning and grinding mill and warehouse.”

The year of 1955 “saw the skyline of Kingfisher change once more. A new skyscraper had been added to the landscape, and the farmers took pride in the contribution they had made to their community’s appearance and prosperity.”

Tillotson company records don’t address the question of who built the second elevator, seen at right in the photo below. Neither does the co-op’s history mention the builder.

In 1946, Tillotson Construction built a mighty elevator in Kingfisher, Oklahoma (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)
Discovering the J. H. Tillotson elevator at St. Francis, Kansas as a centennial looms (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)

In 1946, Tillotson Construction built a mighty elevator in Kingfisher, Oklahoma

Mar8 by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

In 1946, Tillotson Construction Company, of Omaha, built a grain elevator in Kingfisher, Oklahoma.

Kingfisher, a town of 4500 people, lies about forty-five miles northwest of Oklahoma City.

Company plans list the reinforced concrete elevator’s capacity at 240,000 bushels.

The elevator, seen on the left in the photo in a view from the northeast, was built on an expanded version of Tillotson’s standard Medford plan, with one leg. Two driveways pass through the center of the house.

Storage was calculated at 2400 bushels of grain for each foot of height.

A call to the elevator was answered by Linda in the office. She dug out a 50-year history of the co-op, published in 1984.

It says that in 1946 the co-op “wrecked” its old 34,000-bushel elevator, preserving the office and sale house, and erected a new 250,000-bushel elevator. (No telling how to account for the 10,000-bushel difference between the company’s records and the co-op’s history.)

The published history includes a 1955 “skyline view” photo that may be the same picture as above. Note the stained, north-facing, outer walls of the Tillotson elevator, indicating it had been in use for some time, while the elevator to the right is obviously brand new.

The Tillotson elevator is presently known as the south elevator. The wooden buildings no longer exist at the site. In recent times, the Kingfisher Co-op Elevator first merged into a regional organization and is now part of a conglomerate.

Is it a Tillotson elevator in the Idaho Potato Commission’s TV ad? (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)
‘Walking the plank’ on the new Pocahontas, Iowa, elevator in 1954 (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)

An old wooden elevator comes down at Halsey, Oregon, and shares its secrets

Mar6 by kocart

Halsey, Ore., in early 2012.

Story and photos by Kristen Cart

Elevators such as this one in Halsey, Ore., have elicited interest from photographers and curious travellers for as long as they have existed, especially since they are on the verge of extinction. Technology passed them by back in the early 1940s when most of the new construction in the United States went to slip-formed concrete.

The remnants of the Halsey elevator, Feb. 2013, in a downpour.

Canada held out, building wooden elevators well into the 1970s, with a minority of them still in service today, and many more long since demolished, abandoned, or burned.

The end has come for the Halsey elevator. After hearing of its demise in an online forum, I recently passed near the town on I-5 and stopped to see the hulking remnant. It was a sorrowful sight, topless and dreary.

But beside it was a more interesting find.

In an empty lot next to the elevator, piled randomly, was the elevator’s leg. It brought to mind a story–a cautionary tale, really–which illustrated why concrete was so attractive to engineers looking for a better alternative.

The leg from the Halsey, Ore. elevator, piled on the ground.

While exploring elevators in Alberta, Canada, I took a trip to a small town called Milo.

It was a snowy day, and as I gazed up at the lone wooden elevator, a gentleman pulled up in his truck and asked if I needed directions. He introduced himself as Ian Thomson. He was a long-time resident and farmer, and once we got on the topic of elevators, he told me that Milo once had nine wooden elevators lined up along the rail line. The sole survivor, silver-sided and huge, was built in the 1970s. It was still active, and its nearest neighbor had come down a year or two before.

The lone wooden elevator in Milo, Alberta, Canada.

Ian told a tale of the demise of one of the old wooden houses.

One of Milo’s elevators was decommissioned in winter, years ago. When the leg was torn out, a salvage company tried to remove the conveyor belt to reuse the rubber. Water remained in the pit, and the lower portion of the leg could not be retrieved because it was frozen solid. So they cut the belt off at the top of the ice and hauled off what they could. The owners told Ian that as soon as the pit thawed out, he could have the rest.

It was an early spring day, and a thunderstorm rolled by. A farmer could always use rubber–Ian was thinking of mud flaps for his truck, so when he went to check the elevator that day, he was disappointed to find the leg remnants still frozen solid in the pit. So he left without them. But as he exited the elevator, he noticed a thin tendril of smoke rising from the headhouse.

Ian Thomson displays his railroad collection.

With gut wrenching dread, he called the owners, but he knew it was already too late. A fire company fought the blaze, but by then the elevator was fully involved, and it burned completely down.

A nagging worry stayed with Ian. While he knew he had done nothing to cause the fire, he was seen leaving the elevator, and he thought his neighbors might wonder about it. But the real culprit was lightning. He needn’t have worried.

Ian Thomson was an honorable member of the community and an esteemed historian, with a proud military heritage. He was, and still is, a true gentleman farmer.

Alberta wheat country.

The fire danger inherent in wooden elevators spurred engineers to try concrete building methods. Concrete elevators came with their own hazards, but also great advantages, and they remain the premier choice for durable, large scale grain storage.

But we still miss the proud old wooden denizens of the plains.

‘Walking the plank’ on the new Pocahontas, Iowa, elevator in 1954

Feb28 by baggyparagraphs

By Charles J. Tillotson

Safety and the preservation of life have become much more important in today’s world of construction. However, during the 1940s and 1950s, the urgent need to build grain storage coupled with the fact that most elevators were built in very rural areas meant that safety was secondary to getting the job done.

A case in point was a personal experience I had while working in Pocahontas, Iowa.

As with most small towns, the labor pool was rather limited to itinerant farmhands and workmen passing through town. Scaffolding and access walkways were pieced together in a very haphazard way–the means to an end.

One day I was working “up top” of the newly built grain tanks and needed to cross over from the new tanks to the deck of the existing elevator. The distance between the two structures was probably eight feet. To span the gap, two 2×12 planks were placed down between the two structures.

As I began my “walk the planks,” I stubbed my toe on the butt end of one of them. Accordingly, I stumbled forward–but was fortunate enough to regain my footing and continued on across to the other structure.

I realized then how easy it would be to make a misstep and end up at the bottom of the chasm.

Map of Iowa highlighting Pocahontas County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

While working in Pocahontas I met a young man, a few years older than I, who had been passing through town on his way back to his home in Hinton, Iowa. His name was Marv, and he had signed on as a carpenter. It was refreshing to me when I met Marv, as he seemed to be a person who was not only a good worker but an intelligent one as well.

When the summer came to an end I had to return to school, and so I said my good-byes to Marv and all the crew on the job. Later that year I learned that Marvin Richards had fallen to his death on the Hinton job (Tillotson-built) while attempting to cross over between two structures.

Hearing the news of his death, I assumed he was the same person I had encountered.

That same summer, Larry Ryan, the hoist operator working for Tillotson Construction Company on the Pocahontas job, had a similar mishap. During Larry’s break from the hoist, he decided to go up through the existing elevator terminal and cross over to the new construction to deliver a piece of angle iron needed by someone up top.

Again, somehow he lost his balance on the planking, and he, too, fell to his death.

It was eerie to think about how, more than once, I had come so close to doing the same thing and just how dangerous an act this was. On the other hand, the concept was fairly simple and straightforward: two 2×12 planks, side by side, laid down between two structures and spanning a distance of only six or eight feet. Not much to it – but only if you don’t slip, stumble, or in some way lose your balance!

At minimum, there should have been a safety railing on one or both sides of the planking.

But, back then, there just wasn’t enough attention given to safety and the value of human life.

Of course, I learned a valuable lesson in precaution and safety from these incidents, which I carried with me throughout my construction career.

Hanging by a thread on the ‘wrecking-out’ scaffold, a young workman faces mortality (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)
130-foot fall claims Larry Ryan’s life in Pocahontas, Iowa (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)
Marvin Richards falls 105 feet from Hinton elevator (ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com)

Our Grandfathers' Grain Elevators

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

Category Archives: Their Work

Building a mighty elevator required specialized carpentry and subtle touches

Editor’s note: Here, Charles J. Tillotson offers additional explanation about the formwork at the start of the Flagler, Colo., annex, seen in this 1953 photo from Tillotson Construction Company archives.

And there remains one more point to make about the photo from a previous post, “Taking it from the top at Tillotson Construction’s annex in Flagler, Colo.” (use the link that’s included below or click on the photo to see an enlarged version).