By Ronald Ahrens with Brad Perry
As with Minnesota, where we know of just two jobs, we have to ask why Tillotson Construction Co. did so little work in the state of Missouri. After all, it’s an agricultural leader, a noteworthy part of the Grain Belt, ranking eighth in corn production. Tillotson built plenty of elevators in neighboring states. All we have to show for work in the Show-Me State is a 1951 elevator at Malta Bend.
An irony in this comes from the fact that Charles H. Tillotson was born in Brunswick, Mo. in 1877. In the mid-1920s, when he worked for Van Ness Construction Co., there was involvement with a wood elevator in Wilcox, Mo.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to know details of how Van Ness ended up as owner of an elevator that it likely enough built?
After the death of my great-grandfather Charles H. in 1938, sons Reginald (my grandfather) and Joe (great uncle) launched Tillotson Construction Co. to build grain elevators of reinforced concrete.
For a concrete elevator, Malta Bend was “tiny” with capacity of 50,000 bushels. There were four tanks measuring 12.5 feet in diameter and reaching 90 feet in height.
I asked contributor Brad Perry for his take on Missouri. His reasoning follows:
Until modern genetics, reduced tillage, and other tech advances, Missouri agriculture North of the Missouri River was “subsistence.” Similar to southwest and south-central Iowa below Interstate 80. The primary crop-growing regions were the valleys north and south of the Missouri River, chunks of eastern Missouri adjacent to the Mississippi River, and in the Bootheel.
Yes, there are some 1940s and 1950s concrete elevators (or earlier) but they tend to be barge-loaders or feed-soybean-wheat processors.
Missouri’s grain business has been dominated by two companies, both of which are cooperatives. One is MFA, or Missouri Farmers Association, headquartered in Columbia. The other is Ray-Carroll County Grain Growers, of Richmond, Mo. I have worked with both–quite extensively with Ray-Carroll.
A third factor in Missouri grain markets has been St. Louis, which was the primary destination of any grain not already loaded on barges on the Missouri River. Ray-Carroll has an elevator in St. Louis.
Finally, the Missouri grain world changed with large trains. Ray-Carroll was the leader in this for Missouri. They geared up for 54-car (now 110-car) Burlington Northern trains at Hardin (seen in Brad’s photo at the top of this post); 50- and then 75-car trains at Norborne (“Soybean Capital of the World”); and 75- and then 100-car trains at Carrollton.
Ray-Carroll next built greenfield shuttle loaders at Slater and Corder–their first moves on the south side of the Missouri River. They have also turned their Brunswick location into a Burlington Northern shuttle loader.
MFA has tried to follow suit with a greenfield loader at Hamilton, along with upgrading a couple of other facilities.