By Ronald Ahrens

What a crime spree for a town of 700 souls!

On Oct. 3, 1954, brazen burglars with experience in high-explosives struck three important businesses in Ocheyedan, Iowa, making away with cash and checks from one, cash only from another, and nothing at all from the third.

The worst scene was at the Farmers Co-operative Elevator Association facility where Tillotson Construction Co. built the single-leg, 267,413-bushel concrete elevator in 1950.

“The burglars used either dynamite or nitroglycerine to blast open the safe door at the elevator company,” the Osceola County sheriff told The Sioux City Journal. The haul netted $600 in cash and $3,000 in checks. Authorities throughout Iowa were put on watch for check-passing.

The Sinclair station was hit and lost $136 in cash.

Burglars also entered Botsford Lumber Co. but no loss was discovered.

It seems that safecrackers enjoyed a bounty year in 1954. Doc Nebergall, chief of the Iowa bureau of investigation, counted 146 such burglaries.

“I don’t know why safe jobs have increased so much in this state,” Nebergall told The Sioux City Journal the following January. “Up to a few years ago Iowa had gone seven years without a safe cracking. Then all of a sudden we started having a flock of them and they’ve been continuing ever since.”

Deserted at night, and with cash on hand to pay for grain deliveries, elevators were prime sites for burglaries. Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators records a 1932 strike at Exeter, Nebr., where two men stole a radio and certain other articles valued at $50.

In the Ocheyedan elevator’s case, it should have been enough for the operators to guard against grain-dust explosions up high. Being struck by a ground-level blast was a dirty piece of business.