Over the next three days, we will post all 11 pages of “The Co-op Way,” published in 1984 in observance of the Kingfisher Cooperative Elevator Association’s 50th anniversary. Our stake in this is the 240,000-bushelTillotson elevator of 1946.
We don’t recall when or how this document miraculously came into our hands, but now is the time to share it. We hope you will enjoy it and benefit from the beautifully written, ever-so-erudite account and stay with us to the conclusion.
By Ronald Ahrens
This past spring we dispatched our indefatigable correspondent, Rose Ann Fennessy, to Kingfisher, Okla., where Tillotson Construction Co., of Omaha, built a 240,000-bushel elevator in 1946.
Kingfisher is a large, multi-faceted complex. Naturally enough, Rose Ann found herself overwhelmed.
Meanwhile, her prowling aroused suspicion.
Without a definitive result–but with Rose Ann managing to avoid a lengthy sentence–we turn to a history of the Kingfisher Cooperative Elevator Association, which fell into our hands a few years ago.
This document was published in 1984 on the Association’s 50th anniversary.
Here we quote from it:
“The association ‘reincorporated’ for $130,000. The previous incorporation was for only $25,000. Also in 1946 the association wrecked the old 34,000 bu. elevator and built a new concrete elevator with a 250,000 bu. capacity. 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.”
There is a discrepancy of 10,000 bushels between Tillotson’s records and the capacity mentioned in the report.
It continues:
“A new skyline was developing on Kingfisher’s horizon. Burrus Mill and Elevator of Kingfisher, perhaps the cooperative’s most unrelenting competition, had built a 1,200,000 bu. facility in the 1930s and it had always loomed large in the farmers’ minds. Now, the farmers had a modern facility and it gave them confidence to know they could compete on a more equitable basis.”
“For Kingfisher County farmers, who were accustomed to prairie landscapes, concrete elevators looked like skyscrapers, and it made them proud to have erected such a monument to their united efforts.”
From the photo included in the report we see the Tillotson house in Rose Ann’s photo. As the construction record notes, it was built on an expanded Medford plan from 1941 and has “2 driveways thru center” and a single leg.
We are blessed with the cover photo, which shows the Tillotson elevator in the lower left along with the cleaning-and-grinding mill extending out of frame. The elevator’s rectangular headhouse bears the Kingfisher Coop stamp.
Is it any wonder the farmers felt proud to have a monument to their united efforts?
As we drove the Interstate east through Nebraska, a tall grain elevator in the town of Waverly caught my eye. It was shimmering white and rose from the floor of the Great Plains like a lone mountain misplaced by nature. My husband, Roger, offered to stop and explore with me because it was built by my maternal grandfather, Reginald Tillotson.
Photo by Kristen Cart
I approached the building with excitement at being so close to a place my grandfather had once stood. As I gazed upon the structure I had to crane my neck to view the top. I pictured men working up there to complete it, imagining the winds of the Plains blowing around them to try to topple one of them to the ground.
The building seemed somehow familiar to me. It had the same feeling one got when approaching our grandparents’ home. Grandfather had built a cement house for his family in the 1950s. It was in the style of the grain elevators he constructed.
We enjoyed running around the building looking for the identifying metal markers. The markers were round, rusted, but mostly readable. The name Tillotson Construction and the year of construction were emblazoned upon them.
As I stood before the impressive elevator I could only imagine my grandfather walking this exact spot. I was awed at seeing some of the history from my family surviving.
Driving away I had a better appreciation of the work Grandfather Tillotson had been involved in. A bit of history touched me that day and inspired greater appreciation for those who came before.
Preston conflagration photos from 2012 courtesy of Ryan Day.
In Franklin County, Idaho, the towns of Downey and Preston are about 30 miles apart on U.S. 91. Downey is small, Preston is large. More than 5,000 people live in Preston. It’s the county seat.
As Ryan Day expresses it, “Downey is the black sheep of the family nobody wants to talk about.”
Ryan, a follower of Our Grandfather’s Grain Elevators, runs the historic mill and elevator complex in Downey, which is a unit of Valley Wide Cooperative. Competing against the operation in Preston was tough. Preston had 24- and 36-inch rollers for barley, and a board member claimed no one could roll barley as well as they did. Preston flaked corn with the same proficiency that Sammy Cahn churned out timeless romantic songs. Preston could even apply molasses to the feed it produced.
This mill in the metropolis was fancy-schmancy.
“They were always the enemy,” Ryan says.
Jene Day, who operated Downey for about 50 years, finally lured his son back in 2012 to become his successor. A month before Ryan’s first day on the job, the big mill in Preston caught fire and burned down.
“When I started, the building was still smoking,” he says.
The black cloud that had billowed over Preston had a silver lining, though.
“They had just merged with Valley Wide. Luckily, they were insured and able to build a new state-of-the-art mill.”
In 2014 The Capital Press–“The West’s Ag Weekly Since 1928”–celebrated the reconstituted mill’s opening and extolled its efficiency and convenience. The $3-million facility had everything producers and feeders could want: exotic mixes and the quick loading and unloading of trucks, for example.
Such a powerful allure caused a crisis of faith with some of the organic dairymen who had depended on Downey.
According to the the Capital Press, “Mike Geddes a local organic dairy owner [sic], said about a dozen regional organic dairies who now use a dilapidated mill in Downey have asked Valley Wide to process their feed.”
Dilapidated? A black eye for the black sheep!
Preston may be more efficient, but it’s just another unprepossessing steel building with some small steel bins. It lacks any visual distinction whatsoever. In fact, in the photos we’ve seen, it’s darn near invisible.
Kristen Cart’s photo captures Downey’s Oz-like quality. L. Frank Baum’s Oz books were contemporaneous with much of Downey’s construction.
As stated in an earlier post, Downey’s buildings belong to Oz. The installation should be in our National Register of Historic Places. For that matter it should be registered in Oz, too.
Four years have passed since Preston re-opened. To find out if anything has been done about its going organic, I called up and spoke to feed manager Shaun Parkinson.
“The only reason that we’d do anything is if something happened to Downey,” he said.
In other words Downey has its niche and is in good hands with Ryan Day.
Nothing had better happen.
If you think this blog is all about grain dust and elevator specifications, get ready for a murder mystery.
Ryan Day.
Ryan Day, a reader who manages the mill and elevator complex in Downey, Idaho, tells us what happened in an exchange of gunfire there in 1964.
“My mom and dad used to live in a house right next door north to the place,” Ryan says. “They had come home from shopping–it was late at night.
“Dad had been at the elevator for a few months. He noticed a light like a flashlight. He walked over, and it was a body.
“A local deputy lay dead in the middle of the yard. It was Deputy Woodruff, the first officer in [Franklin] County to die in the line of duty.”
“Dad surmised somebody was breaking into the office, so he hustles up and sees a gas trail on the ground from a car that was parked there.
“Deputy Woodruff had put a couple slugs into their gas tank. And they put a couple of slugs into him.”
Ryan’s parents called authorities.
From Downey, the chase began. It continued about 75 miles through the mountains to Montpelier, in the very southeastern corner of the state.
“They cornered three fellows and a gal from Chicago going through the states doing a robbery spree,” Ryan said.
The spree ended before the marauders got to Dingle, the last town before Wyoming.
This is how Downey gained lasting fame.
Embellishing his tale, Ryan says, “A detective mag from 1970s had that story.”
We hope to find a copy somewhere, somehow.
Photo by Kristen Cart.
Ryan Day, a reader of this blog, shared some details about the mill and elevator complex he manages in Downey, Idaho, for Valley Wide Cooperative.
A selfie by Ryan Day.
“I do not have any info on the wooden crib at all,” Ryan says but notes a 1901 casting date on the iron housing of the 24-inch barley roller.
He is quite sure about the rest of it, though.
The six silos–the 50-footers made of riveted steel plates–preceded 1915, he reckons. They hold 11,293 bushels apiece.
The two 80-foot silos each hold “23,000 bushels and change.” The middle has an overhead bin with capacity of 1800 bushels.
“Trucks dump right there in the east side of the elevator,” he said. He has a roll-up garage door on south and a slider on north.
“Moving rolled barley around the plant in my company jalopy,” Ryan says. “The mill is in the background with the main entrance visible to the left. The Ford is a ’72. We call her Purple.”
He uses a 32-foot scale with balance beam, a device that always makes the Idaho state inspector marvel. It measures loads up to 60,000 pounds and can scale a tractor, which then pulls ahead in order to weigh the tandems. Then the driver backs up and dumps into the pit.
Up top in the headhouse, a massive 40-horse motor runs the head pulley. “I’m sure it’s original.”
Updating the leg, the cooperative had a new belt installed last spring. At 132 feet long it spans the distance between head and boot pulleys; it’s made of multi-ply rubber with fabric cordage. He said it’s not as thick as the old belt. Halverson Co., of Salt Lake City, installed it.
The tall narrow building has a leg; the stepped pit inside has been converted to a corn grinder.
The wooden crib still bears the faint marking Globe Elevator Co. No. 6. He points out that Globe was responsible for the largest wooden-crib elevator in the States, built in the 1880s at Superior, Wisc. Use this link to view photos from the Library of Congress. The History Channel documented its dismantling in 2013.
“Corn and Cathedrals,” used with permission. Copyright Kim David Cooper, 2015.
By Ronald Ahrens
Yesterday we showed you a painting titled “Greenwood Cathedrals,” a 48 x 60 work in oil by Kim David Cooper, a high school classmate.
It depicts the 129,000-bushel single-leg elevator built in 1951 by Tillotson Construction Co.
Here are images of another painting, “Corn and Cathedrals,” a 16 x 20 canvas that Cooper did in 2015.
This time the view is from the Greenwood cemetery and places the Tillotson elevator on the right.
Although “Corn and Cathedrals” was sold, “Greenwood Cathedrals” is on display at Cooper Studio & Gallery, 1526 Silver St., Ashland, Neb.
This copyrighted image is used with permission of Kim David Cooper.
It has come to our attention that high school classmate Kim David Cooper, an artist, has completed a numinous landscape that depicts the Greenwood, Neb., grain elevator built in 1951 by Tillotson Construction Co.
In this view from the north, it’s the elevator on the left of the canvas.
Detail view. This copyrighted image is used with permission of Kim David Cooper.
Anyone who drives between Omaha and Lincoln on U.S. 6 will notice this elevator, which has a storage annex that was also a Tillotson job.
The 1951 original followed the Churdan, Iowa, plan established in 1949. It had four tanks, or silos, of 14.5 feet in diameter rising 120 feet from the ground.
The smallish headhouse measured 17 feet wide, 34 feet long, and 22 feet high.
We have posted about the Greenwood elevator before; all the specs and photos can be found by using this link.
Cooper, proprietor of Cooper Studio & Gallery, at 1526 Silver St. in Ashland, Neb., titled his painting “Greenwood Cathedrals.”
This oil on a large 48 x 60-inch canvas is now on display.
“We are Cooper Studio & Gallery and have been at this location for almost 17 years,” he wrote in an email. “I do a lot of plein air painting and commission work for customers. Also framing and some restoration.”
It was my first contact with Cooper since 1972, who was good at baseball as well as art. Nice to come together again after 46 years–all because of a grain elevator.
We have discovered news in the Arizona Republic about progress at the derelict Hayden Mill and Mayer-Osborn grain elevator site in Tempe.
As the Republic’s story reveals, a developer plans to refresh the buildings and make a multipurpose facility that will entail converting the elevator into a hotel.
We visited Tempe in 2012 and posted this story and photos.
And we spoke a few months ago to John Southard, historic preservation officer for the city of Tempe, discussing some details of the project.
This is a beautiful, sleek elevator that integrates the headhouse into the main house in a singular manner and represents Mayer-Osborn at the top of their game.
We plan to return to Tempe in a few weeks to get the low-down, and of course we will report further right here at Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators.
By Ronald Ahrens
As Kristen Cart and I have been blogging about Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators since 2012, she has been able to make the most of her Midwestern location by visiting “our” elevators in Iowa and Nebraska. But I live near Palm Springs, Calif., which is much better known for its midcentury modern houses. Down in the southern end of the valley they grow dates, grapes, strawberries, and leafy greens. No need for an elevator there.
I had only been to the Mayer-Osborn elevator in Tempe, Ariz., and Tillotson Construction Co.’s 1947 terminal in my hometown of Omaha. (Also, a superficial look-see at an elevator-mill complex in Colton, Calif., about an hour from my house.)
So I’ve been winging it.
The 1,800-mile road trip from April 15 to 22, 2018, was an education. I had to go about 1,000 before the first visit to one of “our” elevators in Hereford, Tex. But in the next 84 hours I visited 18 more locations, saw for myself the distinctions from one to the next, and learned a great deal.
Workbench and storage in Pond Creek, Okla.
Subsequent conversations with my uncles, Chuck and Tim Tillotson, have sharpened those distinctions.
And of course, as I’ve been at my desk writing the posts in this series, I’ve pored over the company records as never before.
My takeaway from all this can be distilled into a few points.
Pond Creek basement.
Seeing the elevators–most of them in pretty good shape–and watching the work is gratifying. The first Tillotson concrete elevator, in Goltry, Okla., has not been operational for about a decade. But the fourth one ever built, in 1941, is still in use at Medford, Okla., and is looking at its 80th birthday in 2021. I’m sure my grandfather, Reginald O. Tillotson, would be proud. Kristen’s grandfather, William Osborn–who may have worked on some of these jobs when he was with Tillotson and who built one of the elevators that greeted me in Follett–would be the same. They did a splendid thing.
It was a propitious moment to do this road trip. Most of the elevators were still going about their noble business, but 20 years from now they’ll be reaching what we conceive as their maximum life-cycle. I fear that more and more of them will stand as decrepit monuments. Someone asked if they’ll be knocked down. The answer is that I didn’t hear any of the farmers’ cooperative employees mention a budget for pulverizing, in the case of Tillotson’s 350,000-bushel elevator at Farnsworth, Tex., 1,875 cubic yards of concrete and 127 tons of reinforcing steel.
Tillotson Construction Co. manhole cover and other detail from Pond Creek.
Perhaps a good lesson comes from the news that Ford Motor Co. has acquired the Michigan Central terminal in Detroit. This building, abandoned for decades, became the chief emblem of “ruins porn,” those photos of the Motor City’s decrepitude. Ford will restore the building over four years and devote some space to its expanding innovations hub in the city.
We can only hope for the same with elevators. Not that Ford would be involved, but that the innovators we’ve written about–vertical farmers, property developers, recreation entrepreneurs–will find new uses or refine old ones.
Here I extend a big salute to the readers who’ve followed along on our road trip series. Your companionship and comments have been appreciated.
Our Grandfathers' Grain Elevators 