Along Chelsea Dexter Road in Washtenaw County, Mich., the sun bids farewell to an elevator. Watch for our next post, scheduled for Monday, to learn more details about the elevator. Photo by Ronald Ahrens
A little quirk happened in West Bend, Iowa. Construction men were known as love ’em and leave ’em. Blaine Bell, Ed Hart (roommate from Gilmore, Iowa) and myself all married girls from West Bend. Pop Bell was a sawman for Bill Russell—all he did was cut lumber, all the pieces, all the forms. He had a big table saw, probably an 18-inch rotary blade driven by a two- or three-horsepower electric motor.
Neil A. Lieb, left, and Blaine Bell .
Blaine Bell and I, in West Bend, they built a feed manufacturing building next to the elevator next to Main Street, downtown. My wife Jolene’s father, Joseph Higgins, had a barber shop. They had an apartment right behind the barber shop and she used to come out and hang up clothes and the normal stuff. My wife was a redheaded Irishman. Blaine kept saying, “I have to see if I can get a date,” and it irritated me.
One day I made a point to be on the ground when I knew she was coming out of the house. I got a date with her. She wasn’t supposed to date construction people. We were married over 59 years. That was in October of 1950.
Editor’s note: This anecdote is from an interview on July 18, 2014.
I knew there was a small Tillotson elevator in Minneapolis, Kan., when I stopped there last weekend on a quick trip to Nebraska from Wichita.
I had a weekend layover and a rental car, and was headed up to see my folks. The town is right where I-135 gives out when driving north from Wichita. I had to get off anyway to continue north, so when I spotted the elevator down by the railroad bridge, I went to check it out.
The Minneapolis elevator was recorded in the concrete elevator specifications of the Tillostson Construction Company. It was one of the handful of Tillotson projects built in Kansas.
The manhole cover at the base identifies Tillotson Construction of Omaha as builder.
I did not expect what I found. The manhole cover identified the builder, so there was no doubt, but this 1947 creation was unlike any Tillotson elevator I had ever seen.
The elevator was starkly beautiful, balanced, and gracefully situated in its surroundings. Though it was small, its perfect proportions and simplicity made it monumental. A wide-angle, close-quarters view made it look even grander in the photo.
I have a passion for window panes—the more, the better. They look good in photos, and the Tillotson Company must have agreed—the several windows that let light into the headhouse to illuminate the workspace had a multitude of them.
It may be a nostalgic thing for me—I remember as a little kid seeing painted panes left over from the blackout days of the last great war. It took lots of paint and many, many hours to cover the hundreds of panes in an aircraft hangar or gymnasium, but it was the only way to hide every scrap of light from an anticipated airborne menace. Many years later, after the paint was peeled and broken panes were replaced with unpainted ones, an interesting patchwork remained. That image held fast in my childish memory.
Though the cooperative was closed for the weekend, blower noise testified to the elevator’s present utility, along with that of its towering neighbors. After the 1947 elevator was built, more capacity was added—a second elevator and a large annex stood beside the Tillotson structure, and judging by their style, they probably came along not too much later. The whole complex was perfectly neat and tidy.
I took advantage of the quiet and did a thorough job photographing the exterior of the elevator and its companions. Further investigation will have to wait for a time when someone is home at the co-op.
Specifications
The specifications describe a small, early elevator, of only 100,000 bushels capacity. It was intended to serve a mill operation. The elevator was built using the “Pond Creek plan,” which specified 4 tanks with a 15 1/2 ft diameter, 125 ft drawform walls through the cupola, an attached driveway, no distributor floor, 6 spreads and 9 bins.
Capacity per Plans (with Pack): 100,000 bushels
Capacity per foot of height: 1,020 bushels
Reinforced concrete/plans (Total): 906 cubic yards
Plain concrete (hoppers): 10 cubic yards
Reinforced steel/Plans (includes jack rods): 40.67 tons
Average steel per cubic yard of reinforced concrete: 90.3 pounds
Steel & reinforced concrete itemized per plans
Below main slab: 3,720 lb/34.4 cu yd
Main slab: 12,775 lb/84.7 cu yd
Drawform walls: 56,190 lb/694 cu yd
Work & driveway floor (including columns): 112 lb/1.3 cu yd
Deep bin bottoms: None
Overhead bin bottoms: 910 lb/6.5 cu yd
Bin roof (garner): 730 lb/7.7 cu yd
Scale floor (complete): None
Cupola walls: Drawform walls
Distributor floor: None
Cupola roof: 3,053 lb/21.4 cu yd
Miscellaneous (boot, leg, head, track sink, steps): Included
Attached driveway: 4,250 lb/56.0 cu yd
Construction details
Main slab dimensions (Drive length first dimen.): 41 x 41 ft
Main slab area (actual outside on ground): 1,626 sq ft
Weight of reinforced (total) concrete (4,000 lb/cu yd + steel): Excluding driveway, 1,752 tons
Weight of plain concrete (hoppers 4,000 lb/cu yd): 20 tons
Weight hopper fill sand (3,000 lb/cu yd): 218 tons
Weight of grain (at 60 lb per bushel): 3,000 tons
Weight of structural steel & machinery: 10 tons
Gross weight loaded: 5,000 tons
Bearing pressure: 3.08 tons per sq ft
Main slab thickness: 18 in
Main slab steel: (straight): 1 in diameter at 9 in o. c. spacing
Tank steel at bottom (round tanks): 1/2 in diameter at 12 in o. c. spacing
Lineal feet of drawform walls: 310 ft with no extensions
Height of drawform walls: 125 ft
Pit depth below main slab 13 ft 3 in
Cupola dimensions (W x L x Ht.): 17 ft 7 in high within drawform walls
Pulley centers: 128.25 ft
Number of legs: 1
Distributor floor: No
Track sink: No
Full basement: No
Electrical room: No
Driveway width–clear 13 ft
Dump grate size: 1 at 5 ft x 9 ft
Columns under tanks-size: None
Boot — leg & head: Concrete
The grain operation is a close neighbor to residents of the town. This old house is under renovation.
Machinery Details
Head pulley size: 72 x 14 x 2 3/16 in
Boot pulley size: 72 x 14 x 3 7/16 in
Head pulley rpm: 36
Belt: 280 ft, 14 in 6 ply calumet
Cups: 12 x 6 in at 10 in o. c. spacing
Head drive: Howell 20 horsepower
Theoretical leg capacity (cup manufacturer rating): 5,780 bushels per hour
Actual leg capacity (80 percent of theoretical): 4,600 bushels per hour
Horsepower required for leg (based on above actual capacity plus 15 percent for motor) 17.9 hp
Man lift: Hand operated
Load out scale: None
Load out spout: None
Cupola Spouting: None
Truck lift: 7.5 horsepower Ehr
Dust collector system: Fan → Air
Driveway doors: One sliding
Conveyor: None
Remarks
Cupola in drawform walls
Also Built
Transfer spout to mill
Sometimes it is instructive to visit an elevator built by one of the competitors of the Tillotson Construction Company of Omaha, Neb., and its offshoots, J. H. Tillotson, Contractor, of Denver, Colo., and Mayer-Osborn Construction, also based in Denver. The elevator built by Johnson-Sampson in Grand Island, Neb. is a good example, for comparison, of a project built by the competition while our grandfathers were active in the business.
One of our readers, Teresa Toland, mentioned the elevator and hoped that we knew something about it, since her father, Darrell Greenlee, had supervised its construction. A couple of years passed before I could follow up on her query. While traveling this fall, I took a detour to see the elevator and take photos. The old grain elevator stands now as a prominent Grand Island landmark, still serving its original purpose. It’s location, just off I-80 in central Neb., made it easy to visit.
The elevator hummed with activity at the height of harvest. On this trip, my dad, Jerry Osborn, was along, so I did not take time to interview the employees–we were all tired after our hunting trip, and were ready to get home. But the elevator was a lovely sight and I was glad for the chance to see it.
The original elevator, flanked by two annexes, was obscured behind a large modern concrete bin, so I got closer for a better look. The headhouse was unlike any I had ever seen. The elevator’s design formed a harmonious whole, much like the attractive Tillotson elevators its builder emulated, but it had taken a different direction and had its own look. It must have been a handsome sight when it stood alone, brand new, and gleaming white–the tallest thing around.
The bin arrangement for the old elevator seemed conventional for storage in the 250,000-bushel class. Adjacent to the main house stood a large capacity metal grain dryer. Including the annexes, the elevator complex was the size of a moderate terminal–the type of storage that would serve as a transit point for a rail or trucking hub.
When Virgil Johnson, an early employee of Tillotson Construction, went out on his own, he built elevators in partnership with his Sampson in-laws for a few years. Darrell Greenlee, who supervised the construction at Grand Island, was one of his superintendents.
In this 1950 photo from our contributor Neil Lieb’s archive, he explains what we see inside a crate that’s being hoisted to the top of the Alta, Iowa, grain elevator. “That’s the motor for the belt and probably the gearbox,” he says. “We didn’t take it out of the crate till we got it on top because the crate was designed so we could lift it. That little crane could hold a lot of weight.”
In this 1950 photo from Neil Lieb’s archive, our contributor explains what we see in this view from atop the newly completed elevator in Alta, Iowa. “Those were storage bins for the excess before the elevator was built,” he says.
The Tillotson elevator and annex alongside the railroad tracks in Greenwood, Neb.
Along U.S. 6 between Omaha and Lincoln, Neb., stands an early testament to the ingenuity of the Tillotson Construction Company of Omaha. This early elevator, which rises alongside the highway next to its attached annex in the town of Greenwood, still holds grain. The original elevator was built with a capacity of 129,000 bushels. On the side facing the highway, stenciled in black, is a sign that says “Built by Tillotson Construction Co. Omaha Nebraska.” The lettering is partially obscured by paint and concrete patches.
Highway 6 is a very familiar stretch of road. I have driven it innumerable times between Ashland and Lincoln while visiting my family–on every run to Lincoln, the old Tillotson elevator and its annex come up on the right side of the road about a third of the way there. As a little girl, when traveling across Nebraska, I would see a white edifice on the horizon, and it meant a new town was coming up and we were closer to our destination. Now, living far away, I rarely see the elevators that have become so familiar. But last summer, I revisited this one.
A Burlington Northern train slows to pass through town on an early morning run.
The Greenwood elevator was built in 1951. Its annex was added in 1954, and although we do not have the construction record of the annex among our Tillotson company papers, the embossed manhole covers identify its provenance.
The pairing of a Tillotson elevator with a Tillotson annex is fairly unusual in the company records–usually another company would come along and build an annex. During the elevator boom, it seems very likely that the Tillotson company was too busy to meet the demand for annexes that were springing up everywhere, and it is very doubtful that they competed and lost the contract at each site. The company was too good at what they did, and it is almost certain that they had more work than they could accept.
We have the building specifications for the original elevator in the Tillotson Construction Company records.
Greenwood’s elevator was built following the Churdan Plan, with four 14 1/2-foot-diameter tanks, 120 feet high, and a 13 x 17-foot driveway. The spread was 13 feet, and eight bins were built over the driveway. The plan called for 17 total storage bins and a dust bin, with bin number 8 split to accommodate a dryer. The total capacity was 129,000 bushels.
Grain capacity per foot of height was 1318 bushels. For the project the company poured 1255 cubic feet of reinforced concrete, and 25 cubic feet of plain concrete for the hoppers. 60.23 tons of steel were used for construction (including jack rods). The average weight of steel per cubic yard of concrete was 96 pounds. The plans broke out the concrete and steel to be used for each line item:
Below main slab: 3,200 pounds of steel; 30 cubic yards of concrete;
Main slab: 15,870 pounds of steel; 118 cubic yards of concrete
Draw-form walls: 82,377 pounds of steel; 934 cubic yards of concrete
Driveway and work floor (including columns): 3,370 pounds of steel; 26 cubic yards of concrete
Deep bin bottoms: 3,491 pounds of steel; 19 cubic yards of concrete
Overhead bin bottoms: 3,752 pounds of steel; 23 cubic yards of concrete
Bin root: 3,060 pounds of steel; 30 cubic yards of concrete
Scale floor (or garner), complete: 186 pounds of steel; 3 cubic yards of concrete
Cupola walls: 2,789 pounds of steel; 35 cubic yards of concrete
Distributor floor: 886 pounds of steel; 7 cubic yards of concrete
Cupola roof: 1,129 pounds of steel; 9 cubic yards of concrete
Misc (boot, leg, head, track sink, steps, etc.): 360 pounds of steel; 20 cubic yards of concrete
Attached driveway: driveway extension included above
Concrete repairs are evident around the annex manhole cover.
Construction Details
The dimensions of the main slab were 49 x 49 feet, with a main slab area (actual outside on the ground) of 2,377 square feet. The total weight of reinforced concrete, at 4000 pounds per cubic yard plus steel, was 2,570 tons. Also computed at 4000 pounds per cubic yard, the total plain concrete weight for the hoppers was 50 tons. The fill sand for the hoppers, at 3000 pounds per cubic yard, was 360 tons. The planned weight of grain was 60 pounds per bushel, and when filled, the elevator could hold 3,870 tons of grain. Fifteen tons of structural steel and machinery were added to complete the planned gross weight, loaded, of 6,865 tons. The elevator was designed to withstand 2.89 tons per square foot of bearing pressure.
The dimensions of the elevator were planned as follows:
Main slab thickness: 18 inches
Main slab steel: 1 1/4-inch square at 10-inch o. c. spacing
Tank steel and bottom for the round tanks: 1/2-inch diameter at 12-inch spacing
Lineal feet of drawform walls: 1,006 feet
Height of drawform walls: 120 feet
Pit depth below main slab: 12 feet 0 inches
Cupola dimensions (outside width x length x height): 17 x 34 x 22 feet
Pulley Centers: 145.67 feet
The elevator was designed to operate with one leg. A distributor floor, track sink, full basement, and electrical room were included in the plans. Two dump grates, 5 1/2 x 9 and 15 x 9 feet, were built. The columns under the tanks were 16 x 16 inches square, and the boot-leg and head were built of concrete.
Machinery details
Boot pulley: 60 x 14 x 2 2/16 inches
Head pulley: 60 x 14 x 3 15/16 inches
R.P.M. Head pulley: 42 rpm
Belt: 310 feet of 14-inch 6-ply Calumet
Cups: 12 x 6 inches at 9-inch spacing
Head drive: Howell 30 hp.
Theoretical leg capacity (cup manufacturer rating): 6,250 bushels per hour
Actual leg capacity (80% of theoretical): 5,000 bushels per hour
Horsepower required for leg (based on above actual capacity plus 15 percent for motor): 22 hp.
Man lift: 1 1/2 horsepower electric
Load out scale: 10 Bu. Rich.
Load out spout: 8 inch w.c.
Truck lift: 7 1/2 Ehr.
Dust collector system: fan to dust bin
Cupola spouting: 10-inch diameter
Driveway doors: 2 overhead rolling
Conveyor: none
Also built
Inside steps
Dryer provided (split bin)
The search for our grandfathers’ elevators has led us to many small towns and many grain operations. Among our discoveries have been ancient wooden elevators, now quaint relics among their larger concrete cousins. In some towns, wooden elevators still have jobs to do, but their time is short.
Charles H. Tillotson built wooden elevators long before his children took up the slip-formed concrete building technique, and at one time, every Midwestern town with a rail line had a row of them serving the local farmers. Now it is increasingly rare to find a town with more than one wooden elevator in service, or for that matter, still standing.
The Ryegate, Mont., elevator is flanked by its replacement fertilizer plant.
In the last year or two, in several towns, locals have told me that their wooden elevators were no longer used and would shortly be destroyed. I made an extra effort to document those elevators. This week, I almost missed one. In Ryegate, Mont., a new fertilizer plant was put into operation last year, and the elevator that had served the purpose was now slated for destruction.
When I stopped to photograph the pair of wooden elevators at Ryegate, a town on U.S. 12 in east-central Montana, I went into the local cafe for a burger. A fellow at the bar introduced himself as Ken. He wondered where my hometown was, and the purpose of my visit. When I told him I was a bit of an elevator tourist, he told me about the Ryegate elevators. 
Ken worked at the Ryegate facility. He said that over the years, he had been employed as a grain hauler and in almost every other aspect of elevator work.
The smaller elevator was built in 1917. Ken said grain dropped 70 feet from the top of the grain spout to a truck below while loading. The elevator had been in use as recently as two years ago, then the new fertilizer plant was built nearby to replace it.
The larger elevator, built in 1914, was still used for storage—it had fresh siding and looked neat and clean on an immaculate lot. But the smaller elevator, equally handsome, would be razed next week. He hoped I would get out and take more pictures before it was gone.
Our discussion ranged from elevators to the military. Ken served in the U.S. Army, had great admiration for the old C-130 aircraft, and expounded with enthusiasm about the M-1 Abrams tank and the Tow missile. He got a kick out of talking with another veteran who shared his interest. He also spoke with reverence about serving under President Ronald Reagan.
The interior of the shed addition.
Our conversation was interrupted as a young lady burst into the cafe, exclaiming,
“I just got a deer!”
As two men moved to follow her out the door to see her trophy, she said,
“Come see. I got my mulie.”
Her announcement passed without any comment at the bar. Apparently, during deer season, such declarations are expected.
Before I departed to take a closer look at the doomed elevator, Ken introduced himself more formally as Sgt. Ken Davis, and shook my hand. It was an honor to meet this veteran who served back when we had a 600-ship Navy (in the good old days, about three wars ago).
As I took another circuit around the old elevator to shoot a few last pictures, the sun played on the high clouds, projecting light like a halo radiating about the old structure. I thought it a fitting farewell.
In honor of Veterans Day, I salute Sgt. Davis and his life’s work. I hope he enjoys the pictures. 
After our annual trip west to tease the elk (hunting them is perhaps too strong of a term, since our freezer has admitted no elk meat for several years), we took a small detour to look at elevators. I headed the car east onto Hwy 34 in Neb. after stopping to photograph the Grand Island, Neb. elevator, a Johnson Construction project.
This time my dad, Jerry Osborn, went with us, and he humored me, though he was eager to get home. The kids just rolled their eyes and said, “Not another elevator!”
Like pearls on a string, grain elevators line up on Hwy 34 as it stretches from town to town west of Lincoln, Neb. From the look of the rounded headhouses on each elevator, Tillotson Construction Company of Omaha had free reign there during the construction years, having butted out potential competition as it changed the landscape on the old road.
Only the York and Aurora elevators are recorded in the company construction record pages we have. I will present them more fully in a later post.
The Murphy sign stenciled on the elevator does not seem to be a town name
The Murphy and Hampton elevators present a bit of a mystery. Since I had a full load of family cramped together in a rental car that was barely an SUV, more suited to a terrier dog and a bicycle than the five passengers it claimed to hold, I did not stop to investigate the mystery elevators. I had to be content with a few pictures taken on the fly.
Here they are. I wonder if any of our readers remember these elevators, or can identify the builders? They will get another visit, hopefully soon, but for now, enjoy the photos.
Hampton’s elevator also has a rounded headhouse
It’s all done. It looks like they’re putting scaffolding up for painting. The main hoist is on the left. That’s a Georgia buggy hanging on the hoist. The guy that’s standing there is going to push it as soon as it hits the deck. They might be just starting on the headhouse. I can’t figure that scaffolding out. It’s a rigid scaffolding.
Our Grandfathers' Grain Elevators 