Tag Archives: photography

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 This is the most vicious order ever issued by an agent of the United States government and should be rescinded at once.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.

High and mighty, a Tillotson elevator rises above Springfield, Colo.

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

Not a Tillotson elevator, I insisted on June 8 as we drove into Springfield, Colo. Well, maybe a Tillotson elevator. Then we pulled up alongside and looked at the manhole covers. Yes, a Tillotson elevator!

We should have known by the curved cupola, but it was hard to see the exact form of it from the distance. That’s my excuse for not recognizing this majestic building.

As one of about 30 branch locations of Pride Ag Resources, the impressive Tillotson elevator in Springfield is mated to a storage annex and looks mighty fine. That is, except for the dryer unit at the back. It’s complete with scaffolding and a little cabin perched on a platform. Lord have mercy on this aesthetic mess!

Tillotson Construction Company’s records include the specs for a 1948 job in Springfield–a 250,000-bushel twin-leg elevator following the standard plan that was worked out the year before at Satanta, Kansas.

Another elevator stands east of Main Street in Springfield. Aside from this quick look, I ignored it in favor of the elevator that’s the subject of the other photos here. Now I wonder if I should have taken the time to visit this one. Maybe it’s the 1948 job listed in Tillotson Construction Co. records.

There’s nothing to suggest Tillotson hadn’t perfected its curved cupola, as exhibited at Springfield, until sometime later than 1948. The manhole covers here are embossed with the words Tillotson Construction Co., Omaha, Nebr., 1958.

The company records, which are incomplete, don’t list a Springfield job that year. It wasn’t unusual for Tillotson to build a main house and a storage annex. The annex usually came later.

Unable to explain the discrepancy between what’s recorded and what I found, I’ll await clarification. Meantime, there are lots of photos to examine.

As we were leaving, a farmer was filling his pickup at the co-op’s pump, and I said hello. He farms 7,000 acres at a location a few miles north of town. The dry winter led to failure of the spring crop, so he was plowing and discing and intended to re-plant in hopes of salvaging a summer harvest.

After the uncertainties as we had arrived in Springfield, it was with a note of triumph that I told him, “My grandfather built this elevator.”

Perception of doors remains consistent from Tillotson to Mayer-Osborn jobs

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

The walkout door on a grain elevator seems to be only a minor detail, but as a means of indicating lineage of elevators, it’s as important as a person’s nose. We say a girl has her mother’s or father’s nose, and the same for a boy.

Looking at the door pictured above, from the Mayer-Osborn elevator in Pritchett, Colo., we note the resemblance to walkout doors on Tillotson elevators going back to Goltry, Okla. in 1939, Tillotson Construction’s first concrete elevator.

The door in the photo below is from our 2018 visit to Goltry.

There are two common characteristics.

First, note the lintel above the door in each photo. A lintel is defined as “a horizontal architectural member spanning and usually carrying the load above an opening.” Every Tillotson elevator we’ve seen has a lintel above the walkout door. When William Osborn worked for Tillotson Construction Co., he absorbed this design detail, and presumably carried it west when he got into business in Denver. We see it repeated in the topmost photo, taken at Pritchett, Colo.

The second characteristic is the door’s blue color. At Pritchett, the weathered and time-worn door barely has some remaining blue. Goltry’s door, which would be about a dozen years older, held up comparatively well, color-wise–and there’s also some blue beneath the lintel.

Just a couple of details worth sharing to make the study of elevators richer.

Mayer-Osborn’s signature stepped cupola emerges from Comanche National Grassland

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

The Comanche National Grassland rolled on and on as we drove eastward on U.S. 160 in the southeast corner of Colorado. It seemed as if the scene would never change, but then a group elevators enigmatically appeared on the horizon. We hadn’t seen a cultivated field other than alfalfa for hundreds of miles on our drive from Utah’s canyon country. Where did all the agricultural bounty, as suggested by the elevators, come from?

We soon arrived at the Pritchett complex of Panhandle Milling. Not a soul was around, so I helped myself to some pictures. Most intriguing was the suave elevator with the stepped cupola. There were two manhole covers, but they were high up and I couldn’t read the embossed inscriptions. On subsequent review, they reveal the builder’s identity and more: Mayer-Osborn Co., Denver, Colo., The Hutchinson Foundry and Steel Co.

I was on the hunt for Tillotson elevators, so this was an unexpected find and it’s a big one, the first Mayer-Osborn elevator we’ve chanced upon in a while. We’ve never gotten our hands on Mayer-Osborn records and don’t know how many they built. Pulling one out of the weeds, so to speak, is a big deal.

The stepped cupola is a signature Mayer-Osborn feature, a great support in our argument that the architectural significance of grain elevators isn’t fully appreciated. Hello, Smithsonian!

The other concrete elevators at Pritchett revealed nothing significant to our cause. I did linger a few moments at the old wooden elevator, which is fresh-looking and could still be in use.

The Mayer-Osborn elevator may have been part of the story on November 25, 1951 when the Pueblo Chieftain reported “Baca County Farmers Near New Crop Production High.”

Jess Suhler, manager of Hart-Bartlett-Sturtevant Grain Co., told the Chieftain that about fifteen carloads had shipped from Pritchett. An agent at the Santa Fe station in nearby Springfield said the grain was going to Denver and then to west coast feed mills. The paper further reported:

“Shipments do not nearly total the crop production, however. Much of the grain is being held locally for feeding and for later sale. The 1951 maize crop promises to be a record one.”

Taking a closer look at the towering elevator, I saw Hart-Bartlett-Sturtevant Grain Co. in fading letters on lower part of the headhouse. In a 1950 suit against the I.R.S., the company declared its headquarters to be in Kansas City, Mo., and it owned and operated 54 grain elevators in seven states. It was renamed Bartlett Co. in 1954.

There’s undoubtedly more to learn about Mayer-Osborn’s elevator in Pritchett, but it’ll have to be saved for a future post. Meanwhile, we’re still reveling in our good luck.

Osiris mill in Garfield County, Utah hides century-old secrets in a canyon

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

John’s Valley Road, the narrow paved byway from Bryce Canyon City, Utah to the tiny hamlet of Antinomy, follows the east fork of the Sevier River through remote country that hardly promised an elevator discovery, yet we found a mill house and grain storage tanks in an obscure place called Black Canyon.

The wooden structure that adjoined stubby concrete tanks appeared after we passed a series of irrigated alfalfa fields on the plateau. Four tanks rose about twenty-five feet from the canyon floor. They were creased at regular intervals and seemed to indicate a type of construction other than the familiar slip-forming of our prairie and Great Plains elevators. The outer surfaces of the tanks were pleated, so to speak, and I had the impression they were made of precast concrete and joined together by mortar. The place was fenced, though, so it wasn’t possible to get up close. My guess is that, because the tanks aren’t so tall, a lower load-bearing rating meant this manner of construction produced a result sufficient in strength. Additionally, it’s hard to imagine a continuous-pour operation in such an out-of-the-way place.

In the central space between them, the four tanks supported a generously proportioned superstructure, which I’d otherwise call a run, and a ramshackle cupola.

I stepped out of the car for pictures but found it unnerving to have the absolute stillness broken by intermittent blasts from a medium-bore rifle. It seemed a safe bet the target wasn’t a grain-elevator blogger, though. Anyway, it’s illegal to shoot across a road, isn’t it? So I went ahead with the photos. It was around five o’clock, and the ruins were harshly backlit.

Returning afterwards to the car, I drove away hoping to find details about this attractive hybrid building, part grain-storage facility and part mill.

In no more than ten miles, my wife and I came to the tiny Garfield County hamlet of Antimony, pronounced AN-ti-MO-NEE, which takes its name from a “metalloid element” that’s useful as an alloy and in the making of semiconductors.

The name Antimony definitely doesn’t suggest a grain trading capital. The town is said to be so remote that it was the last in Utah to get electricity.

Nothing was moving except for a sturdy-looking man doing landscaping chores at Antimony Community Center.

“Oh, that’s Red Mill,” he said when I described the subject of my investigation. There used to be dryland wheat farming where the alfalfa is now, he said. The wheat growers gave it up after the Drought of … he couldn’t remember but reckoned the flour mill was last used sixty years ago.

Red Mill, more properly called Osiris Mill and Creamery, was built by William F. Holt, a major figure in western development projects. When he died in 1951, The New York Times declared, “WILLIAM HOLT, 87, BUILDER OF TOWNS; Developer of Resources of the Imperial Valley Dies–Work Formed Basis of Novel.” Or as the Garfield County News summarized: California’s Imperial Valley benefited from Holt’s touch.

Holt first came to Garfield County from his home in Hollywood, California in 1923. The County News lauded him:

“He was the real father of the Imperial Valley, starting work there in about 1900, at a time when there was neither water nor people in that entire country, its only inhabitants being horned toads and Gila monsters, and the turkey buzzards and crows all carried canteens.”

The News reported Holt’s initial development had started at Widstoe, namely, a power plant, a creamery, and Holt “expected to have a flour mill running in the near future.” He was president of Garfield Land Company, which operated out of a Los Angeles P.O. box. In 1926, Holt received permission from the Utah State Engineer’s Office to divert water from the east fork of the Sevier and fill a 3,000-acre-foot impoundment. The water would be used to irrigate 1,600 surface acres. Holt liked to go on about how California was becoming overcrowded and needed to import food — “everything that is suitable to be raised in this part of the country,” according to the News. He pushed for a new road between Widstoe, where his own fields were, and Escalante so that farm produce could more easily reach the Union Pacific line at Cedar City, arriving the next night in L.A.

Osiris Mill served as a granary and creamery at the now-defunct town of Osiris, named for the Egyptian deity who lorded over the underworld while also representing fertility and agriculture. Ruins on the other side of John’s Canyon road indicate the remains of Osiris. Widstoe is also characterized today as a ghost town; it was up on the plateau where I saw the irrigated fields. Widstoe and Osiris were separate by fifteen miles, and it seems safe to assume the flour mill and creamery referred to in the newspaper were the same relic we visited despite not being located at Widstoe.

Henry Bell Wright, the first American novelist to make $1 million, modeled a character on Holt in The Winning of Barbara Worth. Wright’s novel became a silent movie starring Ronald Colman, Vilma Bánky, and Gary Cooper. This Western flickered before the public in 1926, the same year the Utah Engineer’s Office awarded irrigation rights.

While time itself seems to stand still in this part of Garfield County, a full century has elapsed since the movie’s release.

The Osiris Mill and Creamery was well-crafted, which makes today’s overgrown site especially regrettable.

Despite the gunfire, our discovery of Osiris seemed heaven-sent. Even though it’s not one of Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators, we’re pleased to shine the spotlight once again on this remote wonderment.

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.

Remodeling in Bruno, Nebr. finds Van Ness on the job for Nye & Jenks

by baggyparagraphs

The Great Depression forced many changes in the early 1930s. For one, the Nye & Jenks Grain Co. decided to get out of the lumber business at its Bruno, Nebr. location. To that end, in April of 1934, men were tearing down the lumber sheds at the company’s location in that little Butler County burg. The plan was to use the lumber on hand, along with some hauled to Bruno from Cedar Bluffs–which lay 25 miles distant in Saunders County–to put up a storage annex.

Nye & Jenks was an Omaha company, and a cursory search of archived newspapers suggests Van Ness Construction Co. was their preferred contractor. There was more activity at other eastern Nebraska locations such as Fremont, Wahoo, Cedar Bluffs, and Brainard.

Van Ness, of course, employed Charles H. Tillotson and his son, Reginald O. Tillotson. In 1934, Reginald was around 26 years old, newly married to Margaret I. McDunn, but not yet a father. Their first son, Charles J. Tillotson, was born in 1935.

After her 1925 graduation from Wayne State College, Margaret had taught in Lynch, Nebr. for a time, and coincidentally Nye & Jenks appears to have had an elevator there, too.

Charles H. Tillotson died in 1938. Reginald passed away in 1960, and Margaret in 1995. Charles J. died in February 2026.

Reginald’s notes in a photo album retrieved from family archives indicate the men seen above are Dean Essex, R.O. Tillotson, Rupert Hammonds, Tony Proskovec, and C.H. Tillotson. We don’t think the listing proceeds from left to right, though, and are unable to say just who is who. We think R.O. and C.H Tillotson are two of the three wearing the working garb. As for the others, we couldn’t learn anything that would pin down their identities.

Patches of snow on the ground suggest a late-winter or early spring date for the photo. The men are dressed for a chilly day, although the sunny moment was somewhat balmy.

The Peoples Banner, a weekly newspaper published in Butler County, gave this update on June 21 (using one of the many variant spellings for Nye & Jenks Grain Co.:

The work of re-modeling the Nye, Jenks & Co. elevator in Bruno has been completed. The elevator now has a capacity of 30,000 bushels. The company has discontinued the lumber business and will handle grain and coal from now on.

At the same time, Anton Proskovec left Bruno to work at the Nye & Jenks elevator in Funk, Nebr., a town 165 miles to the southwest. It was a seven-week assignment, though, as the Peoples Banner reported him back on Aug. 9.

Ed Dvorak, who has been manager of the Nye, Jenks & Co. grain elevator for a number of months [since the previous August], left Saturday for his home at Howells [40 miles due north]. V.A. Proskovec will have charge of the business.”

Our insertions in the above passage are in brackets.

We think V.A. Proskovec and Anton Proskovec are the same person, and that would also include the Tony Proskovec of the photo.

An interesting, earlier note from the Brainard Clipper, the paper in the town just south of Bruno, intimates just how tough the times were indeed. The report of March 9, 1933 says:

The Farmers Elevator are not buying any grain, while due to arrangements made in the company’s head offices, the Nye & Jenks Grain Co. are able to buy up to $25 worth of grain from any one farmer, paying for it in the Co’s scrip. This scrip is made payable on or before April 1, and is acceptable by many of the wholesale houses thereby making it practical for merchants to accept it in trade. The scrip is issued in amounts of $5 or less. 

We leave the reader to discern the full implications.

It would be just four years before Tillotson Construction Co. was formed and turned its attention to large elevators made of reinforced concrete.

‘Huge strides’ prompt extreme reactions in Lincoln elevator demo project

by baggyparagraphs

A representative of CL Construction, of Lincoln, sends this aerial photo and reports “huge strides in the demolition of the grain elevators at 3001 Cornhusker Hwy. in Lincoln.” News of the project first broke late in 2024. The demolition site will be offered for redevelopment.

Lincoln’s 10/11 News visited early in 2026 for an update. Comments on the channel’s report range from sublime to ridiculous. These are unedited for style or factual correctness.

Sublime: @dougnagel1155 “What weird comments. It’s just time to move on. When I was a kid hauling grain to this elevator, it was on the outskirts of town. Now it’s pretty much in the middle of town. Farmers are not bringing the crops to Lincoln like they used to. There’s other elevators north of town that are easier to haul to and avoid city traffic. I’m sure the Lincoln site isn’t profitable anymore.”

Ridiculous: @VictorianMaid99 “No grain means no food and no food means no people. Planned demolition just like 911.”

Sublime: @danlowe8684 “Those silos were not in ‘disrepair’. They were some of the beefiest structures ever built – and would have been standing for many more generations. They have been working to demolish them for over a year with modern machinery – and are far from done. The silo builders invented slip-form concrete construction in the early 1900s (Buffalo, NY, I believe), and it is used today for bridge and highway construction.”

Ridiculous: @e030396  “Another example of this generations’ toxic mentality (tear-down-functional-structures with out good reason). Looks like a stupid move not considering the increase carbon foot print.”

Sublime: @paulkurilecz4209 “More than likely the conveyor systems were in disrepair. They were not refurbished due to a lack of business.”

Meanwhile, CL Construction has been active elsewhere.

“In between all of this, our team has been down in Sunray, Tex. to dismantle another grain elevator facility,” the spokesman reports.

We know Tillotson built in Sunray and suspect that’s the facility in question.

Note: The white elevator at upper right is a Tillotson elevator from the mid-1950s.

Archival photo leads to guesses on the location of a mighty wooden elevator complex

by baggyparagraphs

The cache of archival photos recovered from the Tillotson homestead includes an image of a wooden elevator complex, but there are no inscriptions on back of the photo so we have no clue of the location or date.

Close inspection of the image reveals the smaller of the two elevator buildings is labeled. It appears that “Farmers Co-Op” was painted over other lettering, possibly “Grain & Coal.”

The larger building–how about that headhouse!–is labeled Farmers Co-Op Co.

We sure wish we could identify the woman standing on the office porch. She is buttoned up tight inside her overcoat and giving a nice smile.

The car looks like a mid-1930s Pontiac.

There are other markings. We see the numerals 2 and 8 at the extreme left but can’t explain them. Three signs hang on the outer walls of the office. The one the car is facing advertises Semi Solid Buttermilk, a brand of partially dehydrated buttermilk that was used as a livestock and poultry feed supplement.

Brand advertising claimed: “When Sows are fed Semi-Solid they have little or no trouble from ‘dreaded white scours’ among the pigs.”

Ad from The Nebraska Farmer, Feb. 2, 1929

Signs to either side of the woman are illegible, but the shingle under the gable is inscribed Fairbanks Scales.

All the signs would lend the elevator a stamp of authentication: a patron of this establishment could be assured of getting the most advanced and most accurate services.

In general, the whole complex projects a mighty aura, and it’s easy to suspect this was one of the leading operations in its region.

A Tillotson warehouse, 1,000 bells, and a cat round out the legacy of Peet’s Feeds

by baggyparagraphs

This much is known: Tillotson Construction Co. performed a job for E.M. Peet Manufacturing Co. in Council Bluffs, Iowa. It’s with apparent disinterest, or at best indifference, that the backs of two photos are marked “Warehouse.” No record of the job itself can be located, so we have to guess the date and what exactly was built. A 5,000-square-foot addition was done in 1958 to increase sacking and storage capacity as Peet’s joined the trend of adding bulk-storage bins, six in all. But that small job went to Ranch Construction Co., with Grain Storage and Construction Co. getting the machinery contract. 

The photos suggest Tillotson Construction did a bigger project. We estimate the width of the two-story building at 80 feet. Could 15,000 square feet be too high for the total volume? 

We’re trying to identify the two trucks and their model years, which could be pre-World War Two.

The next best clue for the date of Tillotson’s job is a Peet’s newspaper ad. 

E.M. Peet Manufacturing Co. was founded in 1917 by Ernest M. Peet and W.A. Ruehlman. It was Peet who ran the company as president, making livestock and poultry feeds. Besides their home location at 33 S. 25th St., Peet’s had branches in several states. They also had test farms. 

Pete was a Christian Scientist and belonged to fraternal lodges in the Bluffs. He and his wife Ethel lived at 163 Glen Avenue. Their daughter was Mrs. Dorothy Bammann. Ethel proved to be a ding-a-ling. She belonged to the American Bell Association and collected more than 1,000 bells. She used to drag out her suitcase and pack her dress, the one with bells sewn on it, and go to the ABA’s annual conventions in different cities.

“Everybody comes dressed with bell accessories in some manner,” she told the Daily Nonpareil’s “What’s Your Hobby?” column.  

Ernie Peet was 63 years old when he died Dec. 10, 1944—a shock to the community. More than 500 people including 75 of his salesmen attended the funeral, and there were truckloads of flowers. The Daily Nonpareil lamented: 

The death of E.M. Peet has left Council Bluffs without one of its best established and well-known business leaders. His loss will be felt for a long time.” 

The revealing newspaper ad we referred to ran on February 11, 1945.

Until Reginald Tillotson speaks from his own grave, we have no way of pinning down whether the warehouse was done in Peet’s lifetime, but it’s interesting that the archival photo (top of post) matches the photo of Peet’s operation in the ad. All this indicates an early job for Tillotson Construction, one they finished well before Ernie Peet’s death.

Peet’s was big enough that its sales staff would congregate for special presentations on the latest advances. In 1951, for example, a group of 75 convened for three days at the Hotel Chieftain and, among other things, heard a University of Minnesota professor report new measures in animal nutrition such as adding Vitamin B-12, select minerals, and even antibiotics to the feed.

All that was for bovine and porcine types. But an amusing anecdote expands the Peet’s legacy in a feline way. 

In 1955, the warehouse cat, Lily, received publicity from a Daily Nonpareil story, which led to her selection as winner of the national Puss’n Boots Bronze Award. (Puss’n Boots was a brand of pet food.) The citation purred: 

Amusing mascot, loyal friend, doting mother—that’s Lily. Born in a manufacturing plant (now raising her family there), this affectionate feline endeared herself to fellow workers by her fondness for riding on the company tractor. No day is complete for her friends until Lily comes riding by. To loyal, adaptable Lily, a tractor-riding tabby, this tribute.