Tag Archives: history

Details of Tillotson’s Satanta, Kan. elevator reflect the passage of decades

by baggyparagraphs

In the waning light, a doorway leading into the interior of the old grain elevator wants to tell a story. This wrinkled countenance suggests the elevator men who worked here over the nearly 80 years since Tillotson Construction Co. finished the build at Satanta, Kan. Those men patterned their days after the demands of the seasons.

It was matter-of-fact kind of place. The humblest adornments sufficed. NO SMOKING: a stenciled order barely noticeable but strictly obeyed. “Satanta Coop Grain Co., Elevator A” painted neatly on boards now weathered beyond imagining. Words once vivid in red are faded, recalling a distant moment.

The many patches, broken glass, and bare concrete speak of the decades of harvests. And of their dispersion like beams of light into colors.

Who knows how many trucks delivered wheat, how many bushels in all? Some trains stopped, others rumbled by.

The faded portal, squinting back, suggests all of this but reveals no more.

Use this link to see our 2012 post on Satanta and Rolla.

Stately on the plain, Tillotson’s elevator at Satanta, Kan. is weathered but working

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

As the evening sky turned to warm pastels and a train slugged along the track on terra firma, we approached Satanta, Kan. in search of the Tillotson elevator built in 1947.

Tillotson Construction Co. records led us to expect a 250,000-bushel, twin-leg main house with eight tanks (silos) measuring 18 feet in diameter and rising 120 feet. The cupola measures 21.5 x 48.5 x 40.25 feet, and tops out the elevator at 166.75 feet in height.

We hadn’t even considered it, but the harvest was just starting and trucks were expected to rumble up any moment. Everybody was prepared to work into the night. An employee saw me prowling around and came out of the office to caution me. Meanwhile, I’d already taken advantage of the opportunity to snap a couple of interior photos.

To allay questions about my legitimacy, inasmuch as possible, I said, “My grandfather built this elevator.”

The Tillotson elevator is 79 years old and has the scars and scabs and prostheses to prove it, but remains in operation for Skyland Grain LLC.

Complete specs for the elevator are found below in this post.

The elevator followed a plan established at Dike, Iowa and included eight internal bins. I looked for evidence of them along with the other marvels inside.

A remark on the records says, “Loading spout out bet. 2 tracks. Roto Flo dist. equipped 1 leg.”

U.S. Route 160 had led us from Springfield, Colo. into Kansas near a town called Johnson City. Continuing on this highway to its junction with Kansas Route 190, we covered the 50 miles to Satanta.

Tillotson built elevators in other southwestern Kansas towns: Moscow, Elkhart, Rolla, Montezuma, and Ensign. We lacked the time to wander to the first three and would only make it to Montezuma in the dark.

There is no record of Tillotson building the storage annex.

After Montezuma, we passed through Ensign on the way to our hotel at Dodge City, checking in at 11.00 p.m., exhausted after a 600-mile drive from Durango, Colo. with stops at several elevators. Then the clerk surprised us with the news that our room was on the third floor and neither of the elevators was working. They still weren’t working in the morning, either, so it came to hundreds of steps with all our stuff up and down and up in the night, down and up and down again in the morning.

On the side trip to Satanta, I should have asked to test the man lift. Despite the age, it probably works just fine.

Examination of newspaper accounts reveals fate of Tillotson elevator in York, Nebr.

by kocart



York Republican, June 6, 1951

By Kristen Cart

We use the old construction ledgers kept by the Tillotson Construction Company of Omaha to locate the elevators they built, and when one turns up missing, we have to find out why. Such was the case in York, Nebr. In earlier posts we touched on York, but a deeper dive into newspaper accounts revealed the issues that led to the demise of the Tillotson elevator there.

The York elevator was announced with fanfare in 1951. It was to go up in time to receive the crop that year. On Apr. 11, the York News-Times published a representative image of a Tillotson elevator, and added that six such elevators already existed in rural Nebraska at the time.

The next clue to the fate of York’s grain storage was the collapse of the Farmers Co-Op Elevator in 1990. When I first found the newspaper account, I thought, “Ah-hah–that’s what happened!” Except it wasn’t the Tillotson elevator. This elevator experienced a second collapse a day later, destroying more tanks (silos) while workers attempted to unload the remaining grain. No one was hurt in the second collapse. Remarkably, the elevator was salvaged and continued to serve, eventually surviving the Tillotson elevator.

The fate of the Tillotson elevator was announced in the York News-Times of Aug. 8, 1991, where we found that the “white elevator” was slated for demolition because of severe structural problems. The article noted that the main elevator had been built 40 years earlier, which coincided with the build date of the Tillotson job. No rounded headhouse (a Tillotson signature) is evident in the photograph, but the article leaves no other interpretation, since the elevator that had collapsed a year previously was still in service. Evidently an annex had been added after the main Tillotson elevator was built in 1951.

York News-Times, Aug. 8, 1991

The previously collapsed elevator was eventually torn down also.

So now I know why, as I travel down I-80 at 75 miles per hour, no white edifice looms in the distance as I approach York. As the people involved with the construction of these prairie monuments pass away, we are losing the best witnesses to their beginnings. Few people make much of a note of their endings. So more and more, we rely on newspapers.

We count ourselves lucky that so many of the participants have spoken about their experiences in posts here at Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators. Now we will continue our research as best we can, even in places like York where the elevators are long gone.

A cupola’s label reads ‘Gano’ and leads to hidden history from Pritchett, Colo.

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

In haste to get out of southeastern Colorado and into southwestern Kansas, I snapped an extra picture of an elevator’s cupola labeled “Gano.” I did this even though it wasn’t a Tillotson elevator. Almost as an afterthought, I also grabbed two shots of downtown Pritchett, Colo., where three abandoned elevators stand including a Mayer-Osborn elevator.

It seemed I must be leaving a lot behind as we raced eastward.

What does Gano refer to? What happened to Pritchett? Why were the elevators abandoned?

George E. Gano was a grain dealer from Hutchinson, Kan. In a 1930 telegraph to U.S. President Herbert Hoover, he explains his situation as the government was competing against him and others like him:

“The Farmers National Corporation issued orders to buy wheat at stabilized price only from co-operative elevators. Personally have 50 good country elevators in southwest Kansas. Buy wheat direct from the farmers and have for 30 years. This order closes every elevator I have as stabilization price 12 to 15 cents above the open market in which I am forced to sell my grain. If this order stands this is simply confiscation of a business built up in a lifetime. You are appropriating money to this organization from which I contribute a good share in taxes. Not more than half of the farmers in this territory belong to co-operatives. This is the most vicious order ever issued by an agent of the United States government and should be rescinded at once. Am only too glad to assist in stabilizing the wheat price. Have no axe to grind with the Farmers corporation. All I ask is fair play and an even break. This not only applies to me but to every independent grain dealer in this section. Wish you would confer with Mr. Legge [Farm Board Chairman Alexander Legge] and explain matters.”

The George E. Gano Grain Co. was formed in 1924 out of another organization in Hutchinson, Kan. Gano was able to build this Pritchett elevator or reinforced concrete at a later date.

Bunge Co. bought out Gano in 1947.

Time magazine had observed in 1929 that “private grain commission men in Chicago and Minneapolis were fighting for their economic lives against the Farmers’ National Grain Corp. created and largely financed by the Federal Farm Board as a direct cooperative sales agency for grain growers.”

One assumes Gano was part of the fight.

As for Pritchett, we found this profile among the Denver Public Library’s digital collections:

 “Occupied town, Pritchett is fading away. The railroad that once brought prosperity to Pritchett has been torn up miles east of the town. The town is a victim of drought and changing economic conditions. Pritchett is located in what was once the broomcorn belt, but plastic has replaced this natural material in brooms. Farmers have turned to growing wheat, milo and sorghum. Livestock covers the rangeland. The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe formed a subsidiary, the Dodge City & Cimarron Valley Railway Company, which built a rail line from Kansas to Pritchett in 1926 that opened the following year. Originally, the rails were to reach three miles farther to Joycoy, and based on the prospects of rail service, Joycoy was founded. Merchants who had set up shop were given inducements by the railroad in the form of choice lots to move to Pritchett. The move from Joycoy to Pritchett included the post office, and nothing remains at Joycoy. Pritchett was named for Dr. Henry S. Pritchett, one of the Santa Fe’s directors. The new town grew rapidly with plenty of open farmland. Soon there were a couple of lumberyards, state bank, hardware stores and three grocery stores. With the construction of three hotels and the addition of a drug store, service stations, a bakery and clothing stores, the town was complete. A trio of grain elevators was constructed by the tracks on the south side of the business district. Pritchett even had its own radio station. With the Great Depression of the 1930s was combined with a sustained drought to create the Dust Bowl jobs disappeared along with the town’s only bank. The government sponsored Works Progress Administration brought in hundreds of jobs for those willing to work on roads, bridges and construction projects. This helped relieve Pritchett’s depression. Pritchett is located on U.S. 160 south of County Road DD and north of County Road CC.”

In 2017, a Facebook post by Jordan Palmer explained more eloquently:

Down near the southeast corner of Colorado sits the small town of Pritchett. A spur of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe [Railway] once ran here off the mainline that runs through nearby Springfield. Abandoned long ago, the tracks are gone, but weathered ties and broken crossbuck signs remain along the old grade. The most noticeable pieces, though, are the three grain elevators, standing abandoned on the south edge of town. They tower lonely over the high plains waiting for grains and trains, both of which will never come.

Fine points of Kansas grain business and brokers illuminated in brief

by baggyparagraphs

Editor’s note: Our post on the Mayer-Osborn elevator at Pritchett, Colo.–part of the Utah-Colorado-Kansas 2026 Road Trip series–referred to the Hart-Bartlett-Sturtevant Grain Co., whose name is seen in the above photo. Here, as a companion piece in the series, we present more information on Bartlett from that organization.

By Brad Perry, Contributing Writer

Bartlett & Company of Kansas City, Mo.–along with Garvey Grain Company of Wichita, Kan. and a few more family companies–has long been a major player in the Kansas wheat business. Bartlett & Co. was founded in 1907 and operated independently until 2018.

Kansas had more than its share of players, both co-ops and others, due to a couple of reasons.

First, wheat moved through terminal markets. The terminal normally had Class 9 (high-speed) status with the railroads, and were served by multiple rails. Many terminals were paid for with Commodity Credit Corporation storage contracts.

Second, hard red winter wheat (HRW) had and still has two markets: bread flour and exports. Add to this the fact that until the 1970s, most grain was shipped in 40-foot boxcars and as single cars–not today’s unit trains comprising car after car of the same thing. Flour mills had neither the storage capacity nor the land space to handle trains. Most still don’t.

This multi-layered distribution system gave tons of opportunity to generate margins, particularly as compared to feed grains and soybeans. Corn, milo, and soybeans didn’t need–nor rely on–terminal elevators for their markets. Instead, these harvests went to the end-user directly. That accelerated when the rails started with special rates for 25, then 75, and now 110 cars. Even the transport and processing of wheat is starting to change—several new flour mills from Grand Forks, N.D. to Guadalajara, Mexico now can handle large trains.

With the wheat margin potential, Kansas has always had lots of intermediate players. The “traditionals” have included Cargill, ADM/Collingwood, and Scoular. Quite a few “internationals” such as Ferruzzi Group, Garnac Grain Co., and Bunge Global have also been involved.

Bartlett was one of the traditionals. Then and now, it has operated country elevators as well as terminals in Kansas City, Wichita, and St. Joseph, Mo. Garvey was another traditional, as was DeBruce Grain, Inc., of Kansas City, and even Koch Industries of Wichita.

In one way or another, they are about gone. In 2018, Bartlett sold out to the Savage Group, a logistics company in Salt Lake City. (Officially, it was a $2 billion merger.) DeBruce bought some of Garvey’s assets–notably Haysville, Kan.–and then became a part of Gavilon LLC. Accelerating these changes is the construction of new train-capable elevators in Kansas. These new loaders eliminate the need for terminals elevators, taking links out of the supply chain.

Last issue as an example is the Far-Mar-Co elevator in Hutchinson, which is now ADM’s Elevator J. It’s the one that’s a half-mile long. In my career I can name eight different owners of that facility. There is close to 100 million bushels of space in Hutch in a market that grows near 10,000,000 bushels of wheat and corn.  

With a small crop, and decent exports for wheat this year, we’ll see a bunch of empty space at the terminals.

A home mortgage for Reginald and Margaret Tillotson in 1939

by baggyparagraphs

We find notice of a $4,000-mortgage at 6% granted to R.O. Tillotson and wife (Margaret Irene) by The National Company, which appeared July 22, 1939 in The Daily Record, of Omaha. A record published in 1940 gave their address as RD 2, Omaha, which we take to mean Rural Delivery Route 2.

The Tillotsons formed Tillotson Construction Co. in 1938, and the company built its first reinforced-concrete elevator in 1939, the year of the mortgage. By then, the fifth of six children was entering the picture.

A 1937 ad in The Daily Record explained that The National Company was formerly known as First Trust Co. and had an office in 500 First National Bank Building. Built in 1917, this was the first high-rise in Omaha.

From earlier records, we know Charles H. and Rose A. Tillotson lived at 624 N. 41st St. Reginald and Margaret may have lived with them for a time.

It figures that this step in 1939, when they already had a swarm of kids, launched Reginald and Margaret into home ownership in a period when credit was tight. Ultimately, they built their dream home on a knoll in the Ponca Hills, north of Omaha.

An elevator mystery is solved with the help of a contributor

by kocart

By Kristen Cart

My blogging partner Ronald Ahrens posed a question for our readers. Where in the world was this old elevator shown above on the right? Like most wooden elevators from the early days, it was likely demolished years ago. After a productive internet dive, one of our loyal readers, Suzassippi, found the answer. I combined the elevator picture she found with our mystery image to compare the two.

The earlier photo was clipped from an image posted in Suzassippi’s comment. It shows horse-drawn wagons and an ancient elevator. The caption identifies the site as Pocahontas, Iowa, from the early 1900s. The two images above were photographed from slightly different vantage points, but they look uncannily alike.

You can see that a few details had been altered by the time the later photo was taken. For one thing, the 1930s-vintage car was a giveaway. Plainly, many years had intervened since the earlier image. You can see that a chimney relocated from one side of the scale-house to the other, a bay window was added, and an intriguing alteration to the roof line occurred just in front and to the left of the vehicle. I puzzled and puzzled over that oddity–the roof had been changed, but I couldn’t figure out how it fit with the existing roof line. Perhaps the perspective made it appear to attach at an impossible angle. Maybe it’s just me.

The doors to the driveway appeared unchanged, swinging outward rather than rolling up. The structure directly in front of the car was the scale-house, adjacent to the covered driveway, where the telltale roof line and window locations appeared to be just so, except for where the roof was extended. Finally, the painted lettering on the elevator closes the deal. Much faded, it was still precisely where it appeared in the earlier photo, years before. Undoubtedly, our mystery elevator was located in Pocahontas, Iowa.

That leaves us with the question of why the elevator photo was found with the Tillotson archive. If the family was involved with the building, renovation, or demolition of this particular elevator and its associated buildings, we have no proof of it. However, this item from the Pocahontas Record Democrat of Oct. 3, 1940, may give a clue:

We know Van Ness Construction Company was headquartered in Fairbury, Nebr. before 1917, perhaps early enough to have built this old elevator. But they were involved with many other aspects of elevator construction and destruction, so we don’t know, and nothing yet explains the later photo. Was this the old elevator that Tillotson Construction Company replaced in 1940?

Tillotson Construction Company of Omaha built a new elevator of reinforced concrete in Pocahontas in 1954, when it splashed across newspapers in all of its slip-formed concrete glory. Charles J. Tillotson “walked the plank” during the construction. Evidently, the Tillotsons had a long standing connection with the location, but we have not teased out where this old wooden edifice fits into the timeline.

Tillotson archive yields mystery photo of Troth Tractor & Equipment of Omaha

by baggyparagraphs

So far, it’s impossible to explain why a photo of a tractor dealership was included in the archive of Tillotson Construction Co. We await further illumination.

Newspaper searches first reveal Troth Tractor & Equipment Co. in 1946 in Omaha. The dealership offered an integrated approach to farming. A classified ad in the World-Herald advises readers: Troth Tractor and Equipment, Authorized Ford-Ferguson Sales and Service. 2515 O St., MA 7958

Henry Ford and Harry Ferguson collaborated on the Ford-Ferguson 9N tractor, examples of which are seen here. This was around the same time that Raymond Loewy and Associates, of New York, designed the new Farmall for International-Harvester.

Wood Bros. Pickers (see sign) refers to the Wood Brothers Thresher Co.’s single-row corn harvester that the tractor towed along. Picked corn would be lofted into a wagon that trailed the picker. Wood Brothers was founded in Minnesota in 1893 and moved to Des Moines in 1899. A Facebook post provides further information:

Wood Bros. Thresher Company marketed their corn pickers on their own and then sold to the Harry Ferguson Co., a part of Ford MotorCompany. 

WHY PAY CASH? asks Troth in this 1949 ad. 

New improved Ford tractors and Wood Brothers pickers cost you less per acre and mean more income. Buy your new improved Ford tractor, Dearborn equipment, and Wood Brothers corn picker now. Up to 2 years to pay. Very low budget rates. A farm plan to fit your every need. Let the Ford tractor pay its own way and keep the profit in your pocket. We are easy to deal with. See us today. Omaha’s Ford Farming Headquarters.

The Dearborn Disc Plow and other implements were produced by the Dearborn Farm Equipment, agriculture division of Ford Motor Co. Note the neon sign in the showroom’s plate glass.

H.B. Smith, next door at 2517 O St., also appears to be a postwar addition to the O Street tableau.

To repeat, we can’t explain this photo. But if you told us that it was included because Uncle Mike Tillotson loved Ford Motor Co. so very much, that would be good enough.

Pages 3 and 3A of Tillotson Construction record, 1947-1948, including Cavalier, N.D.; Richland, Nebr.; and Montezuma, Kan.

by baggyparagraphs

Pages 3 and 3A of the Tillotson Construction Company’s construction record duplicate pages 2 and 2A from a previous post, but these are the complete scans of full long pages. The extra information concerns Cavalier, N.D.; Richland, Nebr.; and Montezuma, Kan.