Old Time Elevator: Powering Elevators

Ottoville, OH

The Odenweller family acquired this 1894 mill from Schulien and Wannemacher Milling in 1897. It remained part of Odenweller Milling Co. until it was torn down in 2016 after it had fallen into disrepair and was too expensive to restore. The main floor was constructed with massive bur oak, hand-hewn timbers fastened with wood pegs. The timbers were free for the clearing at the time the mill was built.

A stairway winding up through wood spouting draped with cobwebs provided access to idled machinery manufactured by two old companies with familiar names – Sidney Grain Machine Co., Sidney, OH, and A. T. Ferrell, Saginaw, MI. Patent dates stenciled on the equipment dated back to 1879. When the mill was torn down, the Odenweller family saved some of the vintage equipment, and the rest went to collectors.

The mill was built next to the Miami & Erie Canal that opened in 1845 and ran from Cincinnati to Toledo. By design or accident, this made generating power using a waterwheel convenient and economical. Simplistically, the kinetic (mass and motion) energy of flowing water rotated the wheel, which turned a shaft to power machinery. Navigation on the canal ceased in 1912, and at the same time, the mill was converted to electricity.

Ithaca, NE

The closest estimate of when this elevator was built is 1886, the year the Omaha-North Platte Railroad came through Ithaca. The unique Gothic Revival architecture, frame elevator, holds about 60,000 bushels of grain and has metal siding. A stairway provides access to the headhouse.

In 1980, Ken Smith, whose great aunt Hanna Deck sold the property to the railroad in 1886, bought the elevator with the idea of restoring and using it for his farm storage. In February 2001, the elevator became listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Ken died in May 2001, leaving the elevator to his wife, Roma and son, Heath.

In June 2003, a group of volunteers spearheaded by Mark Saltus, a Country Grain Elevator Historical Society member from Henderson, NE and a former millwright, gathered to secure the elevator from further decline. In one day, all eleven windows were covered, the annex was cleaned and the roof patched, a railing of 2x4 rough lumber was fashioned up the stairs and on the landings, part of the floor was raised and a new door hung, some of the siding was replaced, and one of the shed door openings was closed off. The volunteers continued the Smithica (a combination of Smith and Ithaca) restoration tradition for four more years.

Originally, the elevator harnessed the power of horses tethered to walk in a circle, thereby turning the line shaft. Later a gas engine was installed, and though gone now, its base is still in the engine room on the north side of the building.

Esmond, SD

Between 1885 and 1906, three elevator companies built elevators along the Chicago Northwestern Rail Line that arrived in Esmond in 1883. The middle elevator was demolished in 1966. Of the two still standing, the larger elevator to the south was built in 1885, as indicated on one of the historic markers erected where various Esmond buildings stood. The smaller elevator was built on the north end of three sometime before 1906 and moved next to the 1885 building before 1966. (The exact year of the move is unknown.)

Though all three elevators were built in the traditional style of cribbed elevators of that time, one of the two north elevators (perhaps the smaller one in the photo below) was powered by a 16-foot Waupun windmill. Unlike the up-and-down stroke of a windmill used for pumping water, a power windmill had a beveled gear system at its base to run a line shaft. The Waupun basket-type wheel was composed of wood sections of blades painted white with red tips. While turning, the blades flattened as the velocity increased.

According to T. Lindsay Baker in his book, A Field Guide to American Windmills, “The Waupun power mills were introduced as early as the mid-1870s and were produced until after the turn of the century (1900). Today they are quite rare.” None of the vintage turn-of-the-century photographs of the Esmond elevators show this windmill, and no one living remembers it.

Baring, SK

There are pieces of metal siding strewn across the prairie surrounding the grain elevator at Baring. The drive shed has collapsed onto the drive floor, and the “Pool No. 719” lettering has mostly faded away. A hole in the side of the small office was probably cut when someone removed the 15 HP Fairbanks Morse engine that powered the leg. The Maple Leaf Milling Company built this elevator in 1909, expanded it in 1911, and sold it to the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool (SWP) in 1928. The SWP closed the elevator in 1965, four years after CPR abandoned the line.

In July 2000, the engine was still on its mount. The Fairbanks Morse brass nameplate on the engine indicated that it was a 15-hp, 350-rpm type-Z engine (patent #10-17-16-12-17) made in the United States on Jan. 9, 1917. Fairbanks Morse introduced the stationary Z engine in September 1916. It was a hit-and-miss stationary internal combustion engine controlled by a governor to fire at a set speed.

The name is derived from the speed control (i.e., hit-and-miss engines fire [hit] when operating below a set speed and without firing [miss] when exceeding the preset speed). The engine had a flywheel on each side to balance the engine, so the bearings would wear evenly and, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “to smooth the delivery of power from the motor to the machine. The inertia of the flywheel opposes and moderates fluctuations in the speed of the engine and stores the excess energy for intermittent use.” To start the hit-and-miss engine, the operator would manually spin the flywheel until the engine caught.

Handsworth, SK

When the Canadian National Railway announced plans to build a line from Peebles to Handsworth in 1924, United Grain Growers (UGG) and the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company each built 30,000-bushel elevators at Handsworth. The SWP, which had purchased the Saskatchewan Co-Op and the UGG elevators in 1926, added annexes to both of them in 1951.

Eventually, in August 1969, UGG bought the SWP elevators but closed both of them on Nov. 1, 1981, when CNR discontinued its rail service. UGG sold one elevator to Joe Szobonskie and the other to Dennis Smith, both local farmers from nearby Stoughton.

Szobonskie used the original Saskatchewan Co-Operative elevator until the late 1990s and then sold its engine. The elevator, with its leaning headhouse and roofless annex, burned in 2005.

Smith bought the original UGG elevator with its original engine still in place but never used it. The elevator burned in 2003.

Ruston Hornsby Engine, Mark CR, No. 241702, powered the UGG elevator sold to Smith. Ruston & Hornsby was an industrial equipment manufacturer in Lincoln, England founded in 1918. Like the Fairbanks Morse Model Z, the Mark CR was an internal combustion, stationary hit-and-miss engine with twin flywheels.

Elva, MB

Lake of the Woods Milling Company built this elevator at Elva in 1897. Ogilvie Flour Mills acquired the elevator in 1954 and subsequently sold it to the Manitoba Wheat Pool in 1958. In the late 1960s, the MWP sold the elevator to Clarence Cook, a North Dakota farmer who also farmed in Manitoba. Cook used it until the mid-1980s.

Before he died in 2011, he wanted to donate it to the Manitoba Heritage Corporation, but that never transpired, and in 2022 the elevator was sold at an auction to Den Authentic Barnwood, a salvage company. On April 5, 2022, the salvage crew started a small fire in a nearby wet slough to burn waste wood. A spark ignited the Lake of the Woods elevator, and the 125-year-old structure was in ashes within an hour.

In August 2000, though abandoned, the elevator still had its original wood leg complete with belt and buckets, a wood scale hopper, a beam scale, its line shaft, and a hand-crank start gas motor complete with its pulleys. The motor plate read, “Milwaukee Motor Company, Spec #59265, 3-1/2x3-1/4, air-cooled Model VF4, Serial #1627207.” A pipe extended through the wall and through a muffler on the outside.

In the 1930s, Wisconsin Motor Company, which started manufacturing internal combustion engines in 1909, began to focus on small air-cooled engines that became widely used in agriculture. The company, also known as the Milwaukee Motor Manufacturing Co., introduced its V4 series in 1940. Evidently, the elevator’s original engine was replaced after that time.

Barb and Bruce Selyem are directors of the Country Grain Elevator Historical Society. Contact the society at 406-581-1076; email: bselyem@cgehs.org.