At the turn of the 20th century, two railroads were laying tracks through Kahlotus, Washington. While the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway (later BNSF and now the Columbia Plateau State Park Trail) passed east to west through the south end of Kahlotus, the Oregon Railroad & Navigation Co. was building on the north end. This northern line was completed through Kahlotus west to Connell in 1904. The OR&N was reorganized in 1910 as the Oregon & Washington Railroad and Navigation Co. and was absorbed by the Union Pacific Railroad in 1936. Though UP abandoned the line in 1978 and removed the tracks in 1980, two grain elevators still stand next to the abandoned railbed. They were built in the 1940s, long after rail service arrived.
A 1909 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Kahlotus depicts four warehouses for sacked wheat: Farmers Warehouse Co., Kerr-Gifford Warehouse Co., Interior Warehouse Company and Pacific Coast Warehouse Co. An excerpt from Minola Phillippay’s 1973 book, Kahlotus Is Home, relates that in 1935 a group of farmers organized the Kahlotus Warehouse Company and built another wheat warehouse along the tracks. A second photograph in Phillippay’s book shows flat railcars loaded with sacks of wheat.
Sacking wheat was labor-intensive and hot work. Jim Moore, a Franklin County old-time farmer, remembers the process.
“There were five men on a combine crew — the tractor driver, the machine man, the head tender, a sack jigger and a sack sewer. As the grain came out of the combine, the jig man held each sack on a platform called a jig. When the sack was full, he handed it off to the sewer, who sewed it shut. Men on the ground loaded the 100-pound sacks onto a truck. Once full, the men drove the truck to the warehouse, emptied it and returned for more sacks.”
With such hard work, why had it taken so long for Kahlotus to have its first elevator for handling bulk wheat, and what were the impetuses for change? Despite the hard work, sacking was still cheaper and easier than handling grain in bulk because of the special sidehill combines being used. However, by the 1940s, these combines were finally being adapted for handling bulk grain. Also, World War II created a gunnysack shortage, and farmers changed to handling wheat in bulk.
The farmers who built their warehouse in the 1930s were the first to make the transition in Kahlotus. In 1941, they organized the Kahlotus Co-op Elevator Company, and by 1942, they had built a wood crib elevator along the original O&WR&N, by then the Union Pacific. This elevator was demolished around 1990. The cooperative’s 143,000-bushel concrete elevator, erected in the late 1940s, is still standing. The co-op merged with Connell Grain Growers in 1988. Connell GG sold the Kahlotus elevator to RR Warehouse in 1995, and Ritzville Warehouse acquired it from RR in 1997. Ritzville uses it only for surplus storage as farmers haul wheat to the Snake River six miles south of town. The river has been navigable since 1969, when the Lower Monumental Dam was built, making grain transportation by barge possible.
In the 1940s, small wood crib elevators were also popping up along the UP rail line, like the one standing just east of Ritzville’s Kahlotus elevator. Franklin County assessor records indicate this elevator was built in 1940. It is 36 feet tall with a 7-by-18-foot footprint. There are two 7-by-7-foot bins, one on each side of the center 4-by-7-foot work floor. Together, the bins hold about 2,000 bushels of wheat, enough to load a typical 40-foot mid-20th century boxcar. A ladder provided access to the cupola.
The assessor’s records do not indicate who built the elevator, but Charles R. Williams, who farmed in Adams County about two miles north of Kahlotus, acquired the elevator sometime between when it was built and his death in August 1953. Following his death, Zelma, his wife, and his children became the owners. All have since passed away, so there is no way to determine whether the Williams family continued storing grain in the elevator after Charles died.
On Jan. 23, 1962, the Williams family sold the elevator to Lloyd and Norine Cochrane, Franklin County farmers. The Cochrane farm and the elevator passed from generation to generation — first to their son Kenneth and his wife, Beverly, and eventually to their sons, Scott, Kelly, Brian and Casey. The elevator property’s official owners of record did not change until 1984.
Lloyd died in 1982, and in 1984, Norine deeded the elevator to her grandson Scott and his wife, Vickie. A year after Scott died in 1994, Vickie deeded the old elevator to Scott’s brother Kelly and his wife, Rebecca Cochrane. Though the title remains in Kelly and Becky’s names, another brother, Brian, has repurposed and restored the decrepit old structure.
Brian remembers working at the elevator as a youngster and coopering boxcars. After serving in the Air Force for 27 years and retiring as a major, he returned to the family’s Kahlotus farm in 2007. He had new ideas for using the Cochrane elevator. While stationed in Oklahoma and between deployments, he and a friend sold used cars to other servicemen whom they felt were being overcharged by local car dealers. Once back in Kahlotus, he decided he wanted to continue his automobile business, but in order to get a license, he needed an office. The elevator had not been used for wheat storage since the early 1970s, and the roof extending over a pit on the north side was on the ground. Brian removed it, and he and Kelly poured a concrete foundation for a two-story office. The renovation was completed, and both the elevator and the addition were painted red by 2013. There are two more 7-by-7-foot office rooms in the former bins named after old-time area farmers — the Galloway Room and the Hoon Room. Brian’s long-range plans include two more rooms in the bins above those. He has not named them yet.
Barb and Bruce Selyem are directors of the Country Grain Elevator Historical Society. Contact the society at 406-581-1076; email: bselyem@cgehs.org.