By Ronald Ahrens

I have to say it was something of a thrill to see the Tillotson elevator at work in Booker, Tex. My grandfather, Reginald O. Tillotson, was 37 years old when his company built it. He would be so pleased about its continued operation, and the modifications and markings, in the crazy far-off future of 2018.

Long ago, most people stopped staring in wonder at these towering grain elevators. As they proliferated, elevators became almost invisible. We stare at our phones now, even while driving. On roads as straight as Route 15 leading into Booker, that’s not much of a trick.

If anything, people use the elevators as navigational points and hardly give them another thought.

It should be remarked that a crew from Tillotson Construction Co. strove mightily, risking their lives, to put up this elevator in 1945. We wish we knew the names of those men. We hope to find more records.

When this single-leg, 216,000-bushel elevator went up over a period of about 10 weeks, it enhanced the skyline of the northeast Texas Panhandle, being one of the first of its type. We don’t know the dates into which that 10-week period fell, but all this happened as the United States was wrapping up the war in the Pacific. Labor was scarce; materials–especially steel–were just becoming available.

Booker followed the plan established for Medford, Okla., in 1941. This entailed a 21-inch-thick slab over a pit 13 feet 9 inches deep.

The tanks, or silos, rose 120 feet. Unlike elevators soon to come, they were 15.5 feet in diameter (if indeed they followed the Medford plan). Elevators to come would have silos of 20 feet in diameter.

This behemoth consumed 1,875 cubic yards of reinforced concrete, another 20 cubic yards of plain concrete for the hoppers, and 83.25 tons of reinforcing steel. 

It’s interesting to note the company records include costs for 10 of the first 16 elevators that Tillotson built. Alas, Booker, which is among them, is in a group of five elevators for which these figures are omitted. A note in that space says “Not Completed 10-10-46.” 

What we can say is that in ’45 Tillotson completed similar elevators in Burlington and Cherokee, Okla. Burlington’s total cost, less commission, was $69,819.15. Cherokee was slightly more expensive: $73,973.90. 

In that year, the difference between them of $4,154.75 represented a lot of dough.

Before the auto industry suspended production of passenger cars, switching to war production, a ’42 Chrysler New Yorker eight-passenger limousine set you back all of $3,065. The U.S. Census Bureau says in 1940 the average price of a house in Texas was $17,600. One can imagine a lower figure for the Panhandle with its one-dimensional economy and sparse population.

Labor rates of 75 cents per hour and $1.25 for overtime at Cherokee more than doubled the 30 to 35 cents per hour Tillotson was paying on jobs undertaken from 1939 to through 1941. Overtime rates reached a lofty 60 cents per hour.

Alas, even though a line item for costs appears on subsequent pages of the records, the totals are only recorded through 1946.

By Ronald Ahrens

After a breakfast at La Choza (The Hut) that included a side order of chorizo, I returned to the complex in Booker, Tex., where Tillotson Construction Co., of Omaha, had built a 216,000-bushel, single-leg elevator in 1945.

It had been sleeping during my visit before breakfast, but now it was alive. The staff had opened up for business.

I walked in through the center-driveway door and told a staffer what I was up to. He welcomed me to look around.

Just then another employee arrived at ground level in the man-lift. This is the secret little elevator inside the main house, just large enough for a single occupant who rides to the top in order to work inside the headhouse or the run.

Power originally came from a 2-hp motor, and for all I knew the original unit was still doing its job.

A bit of clattering ensued as the lift bumped to a stop over a tire that’s laid in the cell to act as a spring. The man let himself out. He had received no explanation why a photographer was present and thrilled to take this picture, but he smiled upon exit and went about his business.

There’s a ladder beside the man-lift. Does it go all the way to the top, too? The electrical conduits seemed to do the same.

It didn’t occur to me to ask. I set about photographing every detail, as if the candy jar had spilled on the floor.

Inside and out, the main house had a well-worn look–maybe I can get away with saying “burnished”–but everything seemed to be in working order. Every door, window, ladder, and passageway tells a story.

Additionally, the elevator has served, and may still serve, as a storm shelter. Some big, powerful twisters blow across these plains, and if anyone needed protection, this was the place to find it.

Tomorrow we’ll have a look at the specs and more details.

By Ronald Ahrens

In 1945, far in the northeast corner of the Texas Panhandle hard against the Oklahoma Panhandle, Tillotson Construction Co., of Omaha, built a 216,000-bushel grain elevator in the town of Booker. Records show it was the company’s 15th reinforced-concrete elevator. The construction occurred in the same year as Tillotson’s 212,000-bushel job just 23 miles over the road to Follett.

With about 1,300 people today, Booker sits on the Ochiltree and Lipscomb county line. It is about the same distance, roughly 400 miles, from here to Denver or Dallas.

The elevator complex was on the Santa Fe Railroad’s tracks, but these were taken out years ago. Originally they were the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railroad’s tracks. There is a curious history to this, as we find in the Wikipedia entry:

“Booker was founded seven miles north of where it currently sits as La Kemp, Oklahoma, in 1909. However, 10 years later when the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway was built from Shattuck, Oklahoma, to Spearman, Texas, the entire town moved seven miles across the state line to be near the railroad. The town was platted shortly before the move in 1917 by Thomas C. Spearman who had Spearman, Texas named after him. La Kemp was renamed Booker in honor of one of the engineers for the railroad.”

The Tillotson elevator’s headhouse, middle, is 48.5 feet long and 33 feet high.

On this early morning of April 18, I approached from the west on Route 15, looking into the twilight on the horizon.

I didn’t know yet that I was looking at an amalgam of elevators and storage silos. The tall headhouse was that of a second elevator on the site, one by another builder.

Tillotson’s Booker elevator adhered to a revised plan from Medford, Okla., which was a 1941 job. (Tillotson built no elevators in 1942 or 1943.)

Medford had tanks, or silos, of 15.5-feet in diameter and a center driveway.

In 1945, Tillotson hadn’t yet developed its curved headhouse, so this one in Booker seemed a little impertinent and rigid.

I had the place to myself while taking pictures. Mostly, in this light, I could only shoot profiles. So I went down to the sports field at the southwest corner of town for the long view.

Then, desperately hungry, I found my way to La Choza (The Hut) for a hearty breakfast including extra chorizo, all for $9.69.

What happened when I returned to the elevator after breakfast is the subject of tomorrow’s post.

By Ronald Ahrens

Sometimes we need to slow down and look longer at details of our grain elevators. They seem to be architecturally significant buildings, and those who love midcentury-modern style should extol them. No big-name architect like Richard Neutra was involved. Yet we see flourishes to compare to Albert Frey’s upward-curving eaves or sculptural statements like the asymmetry at E. Stewart Williams’s Edris House in Palm Springs. 

With elevators it’s more the case of form over function, which leads to a vernacular style, beauty by accident. Many cars were like this: the Volkswagen Beetle, for example, loved by all.

Our correspondent Rose Ann Fennessy said the elevator in Farley, Tex., had “a testy face.”

What I tend to see, looking at the rectangular windows, is robot eyes.

Taking a closer look at the Tillotson’s 1947 elevator in Gruver, Tex., pictured above and below, I note the symmetry of window placement in the headhouse. (In ’47 they preferred the term “cupola.”) The high windows are paired up and aligned over two silos. The bottom three windows form a neat row. And a smaller side-light on the curving portion lines up with the tops of the topmost windows.

The Gruver elevator was similar to the design for Satanta, Kan., which was also built in 1947. Together they descend from a plan developed the previous year for Dike, Iowa. Although it’s a long view, one image from Satanta squares with what we see of Gruver.

I called up Uncle Chuck Tillotson to ask about the articulation and curved part of the headhouse. Could he imagine how this advance came about? As we saw in the Dalhart entries in this road-trip series, Tillotson still built a standard headhouse that was entirely rectangular in 1947.

“The only thing I can think of is that it was formed that way to accommodate some equipment inside,” Uncle Chuck said. “Maybe they’re were trying to see if the formwork and the slipping would actually do the trick for the accommodation of the inside equipment.”

He continued: “It’s gotta be formed that way for a reason. “This is the first one that I’ve seen the beginnings of the curved headhouse.”

Records for Satanta include mention of “Roto-Flo Distrib.” Below, on right and left, are Tillotson’s drawings for headhouses with Roto-Flow distribution. The left, dated 1953, is for a 314,000-bushel elevator in Cherokee, Iowa,. The right, undated, is labeled “254,000 bu. Reinforced Conc. Grain Elev.” And the center, also undated, with radial distribution to all bins, is the headhouse outfitting plan for a 250,000-bushel elevator. 

“Roto flow to me would say it’s like going at the end of the belt and it just rotates around and starts over again,” Uncle Chuck said. “Horizontal versus vertical doesn’t entail the curved headhouse.

Then, as a caveat, he added, “I’m just making that up.”

But it’s likely he’s close to the mark.

By Ronald Ahrens

The next stop on my road trip was Sunray, Tex., which I reached from Dalhart by minor roads through the cotton and grain fields. It was a warm afternoon and very windy, and I had a pleasant drive going east, away from the sun.

I had already heard about Sunray as a key location in the Ag Producers Co-op network.

And I knew Sunray was in the construction records of Tillotson Construction Co., of Omaha.

What I didn’t know is that Tillotson only built a storage annex–not the main elevator–at Sunray. This occurred in 1950 or 1951. The record is smudged on that line, but I think it says 1951. Sunray is placed with other 1951 jobs. At the same time, Tillotson was building in Malta Bend, Mo.; Greenwood and David City, Neb.; and Hereford, Tex., which I had visited at the beginning of the trip.

The storage annex was a big one: 550,000-bushel capacity. There were 14 tanks, or silos, of 20 feet in diameter reaching 120 feet in height. A note mentions a full basement.

The job demanded 3,297 cubic yards of reinforced concrete and 196.39 tons of reinforcing steel. Both figures significantly exceed the amounts needed for the 250,000- to 300,000-bushel elevators that Tillotson built.

The 24-inch slab for these 14 tanks was 56 x 148 feet and the main slab area is listed at 7,880 square feet.

All this reinforced concrete weighed 6,790 tons, and the annex’s gross weight when loaded was as much as 15,048 tons.

Up in the run, a conveyor belt turned on two pulleys, one being 16 x 32 inches and the other being 18 x 32 inches. The pulley turned at 127 rpm, so the 30-inch, four-ply belt moved at the rate of 600 feet per minute.

What I found was not one but two annexes by the elevator; both had 14 tanks, and the manhole covers said Tillotson Construction Co. Sunray appears nowhere else in the records, so it’s impossible to say for sure that Tillotson built identical, twin storage annexes.

However it went down, Tillotson contributed substantially to the sprawling elevator and storage complex at Sunray.