Tag Archives: photography

The elevator in Odebolt, Iowa exemplifies the integrity of Mayer-Osborn’s style

by kocart

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Story and photos by Kristen Cart

In March I had the chance to stop in Odebolt, Iowa, to investigate one of the last elevators built by Mayer-Osborn Construction, the company based in Denver and headed by my grandfather William Osborn and his partner Eugene Mayer.

Odebolt is a middling town in western Iowa. The grain facility looked deserted when I drove up, except for a man with a skid loader doing something I couldn’t quite make out. He disappeared through the elevator driveway, and was nowhere to be seen when I drove around to the other side.

A busy fertilizer operation sat adjacent to the elevator, and when I stepped into a nearby office, I had the pleasure of meeting the mayor of Odebolt, Mike Hoefling. He said I missed my mark and should drive past the bank (a neoclassical, tidy marble edifice in the center of town) to find the co-op in a green building. It was easy to find.

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The neoclassical-styled bank makes a stately neighbor to the sprawling grain facility in Odebolt, Iowa.

As a result of the April 1st merger of two Iowa stalwarts–the Farmers Cooperative Company and the West Central Cooperative, the Odebolt elevator complex will lose its “FC” signage and gain the name Landus. Landus is a brand new, giant cooperative based in Ames, Iowa (painters will soon be dangling off the sides of elevators all over Iowa implementing the name change). During my visit, the co-op in Odebolt was adjusting to its first day under new management.

A lady greeted me outside the co-op (I regret that I did not get her name). I asked her who built the old elevator, and when. She said she didn’t know, but at that moment a truck drove up, and she and two companions pointed out the driver and said he would know. As soon as the man stepped from the truck, she said “Do you remember when the old elevator was built?” The man, probably in his fifties, looked a little stunned and said “No!” Everyone howled with laughter. The 1950s vintage elevator was already on the scene before he was born.

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A vintage photo found in a 1974 history of the town, showing the Mayer-Osborn elevator.

The gentleman driving the truck introduced himself as Tim Gunderson. He said he worked at the elevator part-time to “help out,” but his full time work was farming. He offered to take me to the elevator to check it out. I hopped in the truck, and off we went.

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Tim Gunderson, standing in a basement doorway. Each concrete archway is beveled at the edge–for what purpose? We don’t know.

The elevator, sporting a stepped headhouse much like the McCook, Neb., elevator my grandfather built, was set among a cluster of newer additions. It sat silent, Tim said, because a leg had become clogged and awaited repairs. Tim led the way and I followed, donning a safety vest per regulations, and we entered the driveway and from there proceeded into the heart of the elevator.

Tim pointed out the “blue leg” which was the original, he said. Mayer-Osborn Construction painted the trim on all of its elevators blue–including the metal exterior of the leg.

We were on a level of the elevator beneath the bins (but not all the way into the pit) where a grain conveyor ran beneath the attached annex. Tim pointed out the workmanship and detailing of the concrete. “They didn’t have to do this,” he said, pointing to a neat beveled edge. “No one would ever see it here.”

According to Tim, the elevator was built with a pride of workmanship that you never see today. I noticed the same thing as we toured the elevator–utilitarian, routine equipment was thoughtfully designed to create a harmonious whole, imparting an impression of completeness and integrity.

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Neatness and graceful style, down to the switches and pulleys, exemplify a Mayer-Osborn elevator.

The elevator was impressive. It was remarkably clean and dust-free, a sign of a safety-conscious operation.

Tim also took the time to help me discover the vintage of the old house, and to this end we made several stops and visited more folks in the town. In the next post we will share more photos of this iconic elevator and delve into its history.

 

Tillotson Construction kicks off the 1950s with ubiquitous designs

by kocart
Albert City, Iowa, ca. 1954

Albert City, Iowa, circa 1954.

Story by Kristen Cart

In the last post we studied the oddball Tillotson elevators that sprouted during the 1940s, the most creative period of elevator design. It was a time of multiple plans and innovations, and as the 1950s dawned, unworkable plans were dropped and popular designs emerged.

A surprising number of elevator ideas survived however, some with new names, as the Tillotson brand retained its distinctive features. Advances in engineering dominated the 1950s as elevator styles settled into lines that typified their makers.

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Dallas Center, Iowa. Photo by Kristen Cart.

You can generally spot a Tillotson elevator by its rounded headhouse. Other subtle details are also telling trademarks. These style points became so common because a large portion of Tillotson’s building in the 1950s followed established designs, tweaked here and there for individual customers, without deviating greatly from the most popular plans.

We will examine the first of these enduring plans, which crossed over from the late 1940s, in this post.

Flagler by Gary Rich

Photo by Gary Rich.

Dike Plan:

This design was rolled out in 1947 with the elevator at Satanta, Kan., which had a 250,000-bushel capacity. No corresponding Dike, Iowa elevator is mentioned in our records, but presumably it was built (although I speculate whether the original Dike proposal sat on a desk without ever being approved, while Satanta’s updated elevator proceeded, thus the naming convention).

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Photo by Kristen Cart.

The basic Dike elevator, with 252,000-bushel capacity, was built at Randall, Iowa (1949); West Bend, Iowa (1949); Pocahontas, Iowa (1949); Bushland, Tex. (1950); Pond Creek, Okla. (1950); Seibert, Colo. (1950); and Flagler, Colo. (1950). They all look like the typical Tillotson elevator, but with a larger-than-usual rounded headhouse.

The Satanta, Kan. (1947), and Gruver, Tex. (1947) elevators were built with a revised Dike plan, which was renamed the Satanta plan. They could be filled to a capacity of 250,000 or 265,000 bushels, respectively–the two elevators differed by five feet of draw-form height. Springfield, Colo. (1948); and Kildare, Okla. (1950); were also built with 250,000-bushel capacity using the Satanta (variously named Dike) plan.

The Pocahontas, Iowa, elevator, built using the Dike plan, got its own plan designation also. Into the mid-’50s, several elevators were built using the Pocahontas plan specifications: Albert City, Iowa (1954); Goldfield, Iowa (1954); Rockwell City, Iowa (1954); Thornton, Iowa (1955); and Dallas Center, Iowa (1955). Each could hold 252,000 bushels of grain.

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Pocahontas, Iowa. Photo by Kristen Cart.

Because we are missing a page of the specifications for elevators built in 1954-1955, we do not know whether other elevators followed this plan, though I suspect some did.

The Tillotson Construction Company of Omaha continued to build for at least four years after our records ended. But reconstructing those records is a project for another time. In the next post, we will look at the Churdan and Jackson plans that originated in the late 1940s.

 

Tillotson’s orphan designs of the 1940s gave way to popular elevator plans

by kocart
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This Mayer-Osborn oddity in Cordell, Okla. was only built once for a customer with specialized needs

Story and photos by Kristen Cart

In the last post, we checked out two of Tillotson Construction Company’s earliest designs and their derivatives. In the 1940s, many elevator plans departed substantially from Tillotson’s first efforts, and they had plan names of their own. Some of those elevators were one-of-a-kind.

I will examine the orphan designs and a few that were used more than once, but failed to catch on, in the next two posts.

Orphan designs were unique storage plans, made to meet unusual customer needs. Non-standard-sized elevators were built to mimic Tillotson’s more basic offerings. Annexes were custom built. If an elevator and annex were built together, certain features were unique.

Here are the orphans of the 1940s.

Peterson Plan:

Peterson 01Peterson, Iowa (1944) was “storage, mainly,” with no driveway, a “x spout to leg,” and 12 1/2-foot-diameter tanks. It had a conveyor belt and a wooden, hand-operated man-lift. Its capacity was only 37,550 bushels. This was one of the smallest elevators Tillotson ever built, though a few were even smaller.

Farnsworth Plan:

Farnsworth, Tex. (1945) was the largest elevator Tillotson built to date, with a 350,000 bushel capacity. It had 19 bins with six 20-foot-diameter tanks, and a tunnel with a conveyor belt. A semi-truck driveway was built with a machine room directly overhead. Projects of this size were uncommon.

Peterson 02Farnsworth, Tex. will require a site visit, because we don’t know if a Tillotson elevator still stands. Three large elevators exist in Farnsworth, but none is typical of Tillotson’s style–two have hexagonal bins (the design made a big media splash in 1949), and the other could be a Tillotson, but looks more like a Chalmers and Borton elevator.

Dalhart Plan:

Dalhart, Tex. (1947) was a bit of an oddball, having an attached driveway rather than a center driveway. It had no basement and no distributor floor, but sported the “standard cupola.” It had four 20-foot-diameter tanks and could hold 150,000 bushels of grain. A 98,000-bushel annex was built alongside it at nearly the same time, which could explain the oddities: direct cross-spouts from the elevator provided gravity flow to the annex pit.

A second elevator was built in Dalhart, Tex., in 1949, which also gave is name to a plan: this “Dalhart Plan” described a large elevator with 310,000-bushel capacity.

Eva Plan:

Eva, Okla. (1947) was a very small elevator with only a 13,500 bushel capacity. The description says “cupola in D.F. [draw-form] wall.” The driveway was attached. It had two 14-foot bins, a “rope drive” and motor room.

Moscow Plan:

Moscow, Kan. (1948) is featured in an earlier post on this blog. It was a smallish elevator of 100,000 bushel capacity, four 14 feet-diameter tanks, and a 13 x 17 foot driveway with six bins directly overhead. It incorporated a dust bin.

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Minneapolis, Kan., mill building, elevator, and annex

Mill Building:

Minneapolis, Kan. (1948) is a site that fooled me on first examination. No manhole covers were evident on any structures except for the mill building. I didn’t expect an elevator with a rectilinear headhouse to be a Tillotson creation, so when we featured the mill building in our post (follow link), I added specifications which describe the elevator beside it! We will publish the mill building specifications in a later post.

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Greenwood, Neb. ca. 1951 with attached Tillotson annex

Hordville Plan:

Hordville, Neb. (1949) was a 70,000 bushel capacity elevator with four twelve-foot-diameter tanks, a driveway, and eight bins directly above the driveway. Its rounded headhouse, by 1949, was already standard on Tillotson elevators.

Hordville’s outward appearance is a miniature version of Tillotson elevators of the same vintage–a style that continued into the early 1950s. Greenwood, Neb. (1951), which was built using the Churdan plan, circa 1949, is a larger-scaled example of the type.

Pierson Plan:

Pierson, Iowa (1949, storage) had a 80,200 bushel capacity, four 15 1/4 foot-diameter tanks, a dump pit, one way scale, a spout floor below the bin roof, and cross spouts. It was designated “storage,” a structure more like an annex than a self-contained elevator.

Clare Plan:

Clare, Iowa (1949) was built to hold 88,800 bushels of grain with four 15 1/4 foot-diameter tanks. It had a spout floor below the bin roof and an attached drive.

The artists of the Tillotson Construction Company–architects and engineers, those creative, ingenious men–were prolific producers during the 1940s when elevator technology bloomed. The flower of their achievements can be seen scattered across the prairies, either finding useful work, or passing into idleness, while curious onlookers snap their pictures and move on.

After the 1940s, almost all of the first Tillotson designs were dropped or modified as technology advanced. Only two designs (Churdan and Jackson) of the late 1940s carried into the 50s, and they were rapidly replaced after that, as will be seen in the next post.

Tillotson’s design plans consolidated the trends in elevator form and function

by kocart
Photo by Gary Rich

Photo by Gary Rich

Story by Kristen Cart

The concrete elevator construction records of the Tillotson Construction Company display data in columns, each column headed with the location of the project, and the date it was built. Specifications follow. Above the header is the name of the plan used to build the elevator. A short description accompanies the plan name.

For instance, in 1955, the Boyden, Iowa, elevator was built using the Palmer, Iowa, plan of 1950, with eight bins, each being 18 feet in diameter and 117 feet high. The driveway measured 13×17 feet.

You might discover, on review, how many of each elevator type were built based upon the plan names. This exercise will show us how the elevator plans evolved, and which were successful over the years of the elevator boom. Over the next few posts, I will attempt to spot trends over the span of our records, starting at the beginning. The elevators will be referenced by their locations.

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Richland, Neb.: Front Street, looking east from about Tilden Street, taken on 21 October 2013, by Ammodramus via Wikipedia Commons

Goltry plan:

Goltry, the first elevator of its type, was built with a center drive and four 12-foot-diameter tanks. The Goltry plan specified an elevator in the 60,000-bushel class, the smallest Tillotson built:

Goltry, Okla. (1939); Newkirk, Okla. (1940); Douglas, Okla. (1941); Wellsburg, Iowa (revised plan, 1946); Polk, Neb. (1948–“Wellsburg plan” was another heading used for this elevator, just to make it confusing); and Richland, Neb. (1948).

From the photographs we were able to find, this elevator type was a small, four-square design with a rectilinear headhouse. Several of the type were still standing in recent photographs.

Medford Plan:

Medford 01Medford, the first elevator of its type, was built with a center drive, a cross work room, and 22 tanks of 15 1/2 feet in diameter. These old elevators had rectilinear headhouses, a feature that was later abandoned in favor of a rounded design. The plan represented a big jump in size from Goltry, having a 212,000-bushel capacity. Later, a revised Medford plan had a capacity of 140,000 bushels, and an expanded plan pushed the capacity to 240,000 bushels:

Medford, Okla. (1941); Thomas, Okla. (1941); Burlington, Okla. (revised plan, 1945); Cherokee, Okla. (revised plan, “like Burlington,” 1945); Lamont, Okla. (revised plan, 1945); Blackwell, Okla. (revised plan “like Lamont,” 1945); Booker, Tex. (revised plan, 1945); Follett, Tex (revised plan, 1945); Elkhart, Kan. (revised plan, 1946); Kingfisher, Okla. (expanded plan, later designated the Kingfisher plan, 1946); Thomas, Okla. (expanded plan, “similar to Kingfisher,” 1946); Ensign, Kan. (expanded plan, “similar to Kingfisher,” 1946); Manchester, Okla. (revised plan, later designated the Manchester plan, 1948); Montezuma, Kan. (1948)

The two daughters of the Medford plan, Manchester and Kingfisher, follow:

Manchester Plan:

Medford 02Manchester, Okla. (1948); Rolla, Kan. (“like Manchester,” 1948)

Kingfisher Plan:

Hooker, Okla. (1949)

More analysis is needed to determine exactly when the transition to a rounded headhouse occurred–but we think it did occur sometime after the Manchester plan was first designated as such, unless some of these elevators were modified at a later date.

What is clear from photos of Goltry and Medford plan elevators is that the rounded headhouse design was not used in Tillotson’s earliest elevators, and was likely adopted sometime in 1948–both plans made the transition in that year. Other details are bound to emerge as we study the other elevator plan types as they entered the Tillotson Company’s repertoire.

 

 

 

Travel notes from a Wyoming hunting trip

by kocart
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Cozad, Nebraska

Story and photos by Kristen Cart

How do you start an essay about the places you miss while traveling? Rolling along a two-lane highway as it becomes dark is a good way.

As you slip beyond the scenes of daylight, your awareness imperceptibly closes in on you until the oval of light from your headlights is your entire world. The highway center-line stripes brighten as they slide by your left knee, keeping a hypnotic rhythm as you fight to stay alert. You see the occasional shadow of a grayish body slipping across, almost out of sight on the edge of your pavement pool save for a momentary flash of eyes, cautiously regarding your progress, shimmering like a pair of reflectors in the ditch.

The rhythm lulls you and you reach for the chewing gum and start looking for a friendly gas station with a tolerable cup of coffee.

Then you know you are missing things.

If it were not for a fortuitous change in our schedule on the way out, when of course we had no time to stop, I would not have known that this inconvenient sunset would obscure two elevator sites. Usually on this trip, this highway is where we stretch the mileage after dark until we can go no further. It is true whether we are starting from camp and stretching the return trip past Ogallala, or rolling from Ashland and hoping to make it as far as Torrington, on the way our hunting spot beyond Lysite.

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Morrill, Nebraska

Somehow, the view on this road is only as wide as the pavement, every time.

On other trips the stopping spot has been Sidney, where we stay the night, then in the morning we drop into the Cabelas on the way toward Casper for last minute items like socks and bb’s. On our return trip, we overnight in Sidney again to visit Cabelas to get the stuff we forgot so we have it for next year (of course by that time, the new stuff has been misplaced and we go through the whole routine again).

On those occasions we bypass this road altogether.

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Mitchell, Nebraska

On our way back through–this time, after dark, Llewellyn is the first newly discovered elevator site we see. The old wooden house stands hard by the road with bins lined up on either side. A Purina checkerboard shows faintly in the darkness, but a photograph is out of the question. We are pushing the miles, and the setup for this dark building would be time consuming and the results would be marginal, so we pass it by. I note the town for future reference, for that imaginary trip when we will be rolling through in full sun with all the time in the world.

The second elevator location comes into view when we are just about at the end of our rope in Ogallala. I have gone through a pack of gum, and I have made reservations for a motel somewhere nearby for the night. We are stumbling in past midnight. One old wooden elevator displays a Nutrena sign from it’s spot at the end of a short lane, where it nestles among round bins and bathes in dimly yellowish artificial light. As we roll across the viaduct in town, which takes us over the tracks, we see another silvery old-timer on our left which looks intriguing. I will have to check these elevators later.

Of course.

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Morrill, Nebraska

In the morning, all is forgotten as we get on our way toward Ashland.

This is how you leave a patch of geography perpetually obscured in darkness, and scarcely notice its absence. The absence doesn’t breach your consciousness until you notice what is missing, and that can take a long time.

I spend my professional life flying across the continent in the dark, with things like the Grand Canyon and the Rocky Mountains passing below unremarked. A scattering of lights strewn across the land are all the clues to life below—like droplets of water on black velvet, illuminated by an unseen light, they twinkle and tease.

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Lingle, Wyoming

The familiar cockpit lights are my entire world with little else to distract—the gum to keep me alert, or coffee sometimes, and a cozy hotel to look forward to.

 

Hunting trips afford opportunities for two types of photography

by kocart

DSC_0889Story and photos by Kristen Cart

We live far from the preponderance of the nation’s grain elevators. Time and money are not unlimited, so it takes a good excuse to go look at elevators when the family has other things on the agenda. Western hunting expeditions are a splendid source for such excuses, so once or twice on each trip, I sneak in an elevator stop.

On a typical trip west, when you have a camera and the inclination to take pictures, vistas of country living make you suddenly pull over, disentangle the camera strap from the seatbelt, and send snack wrappers tumbling to the floor. A few epithets escape your lips when you find the ISO is still set for the moon shot of the night before, but unless a fleeing bird made you stop, the problem is quickly fixed.

DSC_0502In the hotel at night you eagerly page through the day’s images, occasioning a few more blue words, but often great satisfaction. You have elevators and neat old buildings, and you also have scenery. The rest of your family members roll their eyes and talk about elk and pheasants and bird dogs.

The fruits of your labor make it worth the effort–especially if you come home with beautiful pictures and meat for the freezer.

On the eve of another hunting trip, here are a few photos from earlier trips, including the odd elevator picture or two that slipped into the mix.

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Bruce Selyem, an old hand in elevator photography, is still in the game

by kocart
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Ione, Oregon

Story and photos by Kristen Cart

An eagerly awaited package arrived in the mail the other day. I opened it to find Bruce and Barbara Selyem’s 2016 elevator calendar–a vivid sampling of the photography work that Bruce has done over the years. Barbara Selyem called me to see if I would like one this year–I am an old customer, and I get one every year. So of course I asked her to send it.

Thirteen carefully selected images grace the calendar, and it does not disappoint.

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Indus, Alberta, Canada

Selyem Enterprises also produces framed elevator images for home and business, and if I bought everything I liked, I would run out of wall space very quickly. Bruce has documented many beautiful old wooden elevators in the United States and Canada that have gradually disappeared. Over the 20-plus years Bruce has been shooting elevators, most of the structures have only his photos to remember them by.

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Mossleigh, Alberta, Canada

If my kids had anyone to blame for the numerous side trips, excursions, and stops we have made to take pictures of wooden elevators in the wild, Bruce Selyem would top their list. I have studied his website carefully to plan for elevator photography trips in Idaho and Oregon. Many times the kids have admonished me for the odd elevator stop on the way to Nebraska. I can’t help it. They are beautiful.

Though not many of my wooden elevator photos have been published here, there is quite a collection of them. It is a passion, and I come by it honestly.

My grandfather, William Osborn, took many photos when I was a little girl. I remember the bellows on his camera, the camera body he carefully set up on a tripod, and his advice to sit still. He would pull the Polaroid photo out of the back of the camera while he started his buzzing timer. The hand on the timer would move interminably, and I would stand on tip-toe, eagerly awaiting the magic moment. Then he would peel the negative away and voila, a damp image would emerge, which I would hold gingerly by the edges while it dried.

As a girl, I wondered at the photo of his first elevator in McCook, Nebraska, that he built for Mayer-Osborn. I never knew I would combine his love for photography with his life’s work one day, and share all of it here.

To check out the photography of Bruce Selyem, visit his website at grain elevator photos. Bruce and Barbara Selyem welcome you.

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A concrete beauty. Nyssa, Oregon

Elevator investigations move farther afield with a side trip to Alta, Iowa

by kocart
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The trademark rounded headhouse identifies the Tillotson elevator, shown here behind the office and truck scale.

Story and photos by Kristen Cart

It is getting harder to visit our grandfathers’ elevators. All of the elevators within a half hour either side of the I-80 corridor have already been exhausted, so a stop for photography requires real planning and extra gas, time, and effort, even when piggybacked on our normal family visit to Nebraska.

The trip to Alta, Iowa, required just such an extra investment in driving time. The town and its Tillotson elevator is just north-west of Storm Lake in the northwestern corner of the state, and is not, quite frankly, on the way to anywhere.

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The Tillotson elevator in Alta, Iowa, where the old structure is mostly obscured by later bins.

I wonder how our kids put up with it. This trip in particular required over an hour’s northward jaunt before angling generally east-northeast, with a 30-minute divot or two along the Nebraska-to-Illinois route. Each detour took in wayward sites, including Alta.

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A look up the rail line opposite the Tillotson elevator revealed the historical trappings of town, with a backdrop of new grain bins.

It is normally a 10-hour drive to get home from visiting their grandparents, but this elevator excursion would tax my children’s patience for several more hours. To be fair, we got an extra early start. But that meant the serious backseat fidgeting would start sooner.

You would think that I would study Tillotson records first, and inject some discipline and efficiency into planning our route.

But no, that task was left for after the trip, so I could see how closely we approached several sites without seeing them.

I don’t think the kids minded the near misses–but they’ll get to see the countryside again when we go through to mop up the strays.

 

A long-time elevator man sends greetings from Hardy, Iowa, and shares some lore

by baggyparagraphs

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Story and photos by Larry Larsen

In response to a recent post about Odebolt, Iowa, we heard from Larry Larsen, who works for Gold Eagle Cooperative’s facility in Hardy, Iowa. Larry says Tillotson Construction Company’s elevator, built there in 1956, is “still operating and used daily!”

GilmoreCity08Larry graduated from high school in Gilmore City, Iowa. His father managed an elevator from 1958 to 2008, and Larry remembers high school summers spent cleaning out and painting silos.

After getting in touch with us, Larry took an excursion and delivered some photos of the Gilmore City elevator. It was built in 1949, a year when Tillotson also built elevators in Dalhart, Tex., Hooker, Okla., Hordville, Neb., West Bend, Iowa, and Montevideo, Minn., among other places.

Larry, who served 25 years in the United States Army, shared these additional reminiscences:

“I know a lot of the facilities in my old stomping grounds are [built by] Todd & Sargent. The facilities built in the 1980s and 1990s were done by Lambert & Hamlin.

“Interesting thing–I found out through my dad in early 2000s that Lambert & Hamlin built or started to build two concrete tanks in the town of Rutland, Iowa, and about halfway into that project they went bankrupt, causing Pro Cooperative to find a contractor mid-pour to finish the project.

GilmoreCity06“Pro Cooperative then became receiver of Lambert & Hamlin’s property in Sioux City.

“A lot of interesting history in many of the small towns all around the Midwest with the construction of elevators. Some communities had their population double when crews came to town.

“Reading the blogs, there was also a lot of tragedy involved, with people falling off the partially completed structures. I remember, in the early ’80s, Lambert & Hamlin was doing a slip in the tiny town of Pioneer, Iowa.

“They had a laborer who was smoking pot as he was tying rebar on the night shift. Said individual stopped tying rebar to light a joint, lost his balance, and fell 80 or so feet to his death.

“Slipping never paused for that.”

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Looking inside and outside of Tillotson’s elevator in Cavalier, N.D.

by baggyparagraphs

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Story by Ronald Ahrens with photos by Scott Hansen

While looking at the specifications for Tillotson Construction Company’s concrete elevator built at Cavalier, N.D., in 1948, we gave a call to CHS, Inc. and reached Scott Hansen, who oversees operations at the 460,000-bushel facility there.

South view.

South view. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Hansen said the Tillotson elevator is mainly used for extra capacity during harvest. The operation mainly handles wheat, he said in a subsequent text message, “but also a lot of soybeans and corn.”

He offered to take some pictures, and we present them here, along with repeating the specs from our post of July 27.

This elevator was built according to the plan used for an elevator at Sheldon, Iowa, in 1941. It featured a center driveway and four tanks, each being 14.5 feet in diameter and rising 102 feet. Total capacity was 93,700 bushels.

The job required 1,027 tons of reinforced concrete and 55.13 tons of steel.

At 18 inches thick and covering 1,768 square feet, the main slab supported a gross weight as as high as 5,321 tons. Eight bins were overhead in the 12-by-17-foot driveway.

Crowning the main house was a cupola, or headhouse, of 15.5 x 32 x 22.5 feet, and the pulley center in this single-leg elevator was 127.0 feet above the floor.

North view.

North view. The blue conveyor fills the structure; the gray one on the ground empties it.

Boot and head pulleys were 60 x 14 inches, but the head pulley’s axle diameter of 3-7/16 inches was 1.25 inches greater than the boot’s.

The 14-inch, 6-ply Calumet belt had cups of 12 x 6-inches spaced 10 inches apart. A 20-hp Howell motor supplied the drive in the headhouse. Actual leg capacity was 4500 bushels per hour.

A 2-hp motor operated the man lift. (Lifts in some Tillotson elevators of this era were still hand-operated.)

Cavalier was a fully accessorized elevator, with a 10-bushel load-out scale, an 8-inch load-out spout of 10-gauge steel, and 14-gauge cupola spouting. There was a 7.5-hp truck lift and a dust collection system consisting of a fan, column, and bin.

In the space for remarks at the page’s bottom, we find written, “One end round on cupola.” Yet the photo shows both ends are rounded.

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