Grain Elevator in South Dakota

Central Dakota Flouring Mill Grain Elevator, Arlington South Dakota

Date added: June 09, 2023 Categories: South Dakota Mill Grain Elevator

The breadbasket of the United States moved west with the frontier, from Connecticut to New York to Ohio, then on to Wisconsin and Minnesota, and finally to the Dakotas, Kansas, and the rest of the Great Plains. The wheat that farmers raised in the early days of the American Republic was hauled only a few miles to the nearest water-powered mill where it was ground into flour, as it had been in Europe for centuries. Grain was handled in sacks, hauled in wagons, stacked in flat warehouses, and then wheeled aboard canal boats or coastal vessels for distribution to market. In 1820, only one of every eight bushels of wheat produced in the United States was raised west of Pittsburgh or Buffalo.

As the frontier moved westward so did grain production. By 1840, nearly one-third of the American wheat crop was raised in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. However, grain handling was still a fairly primitive affair, with many small warehouses assembling shipments. Then in 1842, the grain elevator was developed by Joseph Dart, a warehouseman in Buffalo, New York. His invention was so logical and cost-effective that it was quickly adopted by others, and it rapidly spread its distinctive form across the landscape during the latter decades of the nineteenth century as the agricultural frontier moved westward through the prairies. It helped turn the grain trade business away from St. Louis, where slaves moved the sacks, sometimes over great distances, to the boats in the river, to Chicago, which was a railroad center. The Chicago Board of Trade, a nonprofit organization with members representing millers, processors, importers, exporters, and elevator interests, was organized in 1848. In that same year, Chicago acquired its first steam-powered grain elevator. By 1850, continued expansion on the western frontier made Chicago the principal assembly point for grain, and by 1860, the city had several terminal elevators with million-bushel capacities.

The grain elevators' function, to store grain between harvest time and shipment to market, has changed scarcely at all over time. The basic structure is known as an "elevator" because it typically contains one or more vertical conveyors for lifting grain from ground level to an overhead system of belts and chutes that redirects the grain into various storage bins. From there, it is lifted again and then fed by gravity or mechanical means into waiting railroad cars, trucks, or barges for shipment to market. Elevating the grain is merely a handy means of transferring it from one bin to another. In the construction of grain elevators, form follows function. The essential parts of a wooden grain elevator include: the cribbed storage bins (cribbed for strength): the drive shed (to protect the downloading from the elements); the scale room; the walkway or goose walk; the office-engine shed; and the fuel shed. In particular, the cribbing was a simple way to assure the strength of the building. The walls were made up of lumber, 2x10s, 2x8s, 2x6s, and 4x4s laid flat, one on top of the other, with the ends overlapped and dovetailed and then spiked together. Eventually concrete slabs were added at the dump scale.

Grain merchants classify elevators into three basic types. Country elevators are located along railroad sidetracks in towns, or in some cases, about halfway between towns, and they receive most of their grain from local farmers. Terminal elevators receive their grain via rail or truck from the country elevators, and they sell the product to manufacturers or store the grain for shipment to distant domestic and foreign markets. In recent years, a third type, known as a subterminal elevator, has been recognized. Subterminals receive shipments from smaller country elevators for the purpose of assembling large-volume shipments to terminal elevators, thus serving as intermediate storage sites or "surge tanks" in the system.

For many years the typical country elevator on the prairie was a three or four-story wood-frame structure that had a storage capacity of approximately thirty-five thousand bushels. The elevator actually handled more grain than that during a typical year because stored grain was shipped out as more was brought in. An elevator might turn over its grain stocks at least four times in a year, creating an actual volume of one hundred fifty thousand bushels or more. If the main crop was wheat, with a yield of twenty-five bushels to the acre, then a single elevator could accommodate more than six thousand acres of the crop. Translated into square miles, this meant that a single elevator could serve an area of perhaps twenty square miles. Translated into the farmers' terms, the travel distance to the elevator via section-line roads would work out to a maximum of about five miles.

However, a five-mile trip to the elevator was really a ten-mile round trip, one that had to be made repeatedly as the harvest was brought in. In the northern plains such as South Dakota, where the harvest comes in the fall, the last trips to the elevator sometimes were made in blizzard conditions, and then every farmer had to wait his turn in line at the elevator. Sometimes he returned to the farm in the early hours of the morning, only to repeat the same cycle again the next day. It was not uncommon for bankers to keep their doors open well after midnight during the harvest season to handle the financial transactions that accompanied this once-a-year peak in business.

After the mid-1870s, the basic unit, a bushel of wheat, remained the standard, but it was no longer feasible to handle grain in bushels or even in hundred-pound sacks. Railway technology, however, made a somewhat inadequate response to the new demands of the system. Instead of handling grain in easily loaded and unloaded bulk cars, railroads chose instead to manufacture thousands of all-purpose boxcars. For most of the next century, nearly all grain handled from country elevators was shipped in railroad boxcars. Boards and paper were placed across the open-door side in order to make it possible to load the car to its fourteen-hundred-bushel capacity without having grain spill onto the ground. When the harvest came, railroads dispatched strings of these boxcars along every line, five or ten per elevator, every few days. The loaded cars were assembled into strings as long as a locomotive could pull, hauled to the nearest railroad terminal, and then reassembled into still longer strings pulled by larger locomotives for the journey to market.

The bulking of grain into ever-larger quantities, however, really began on the farm, where the grain wagons were loaded. A quarter section (160 acres) of wheat would fill twenty wagons. The grain from each wagon that was brought into the elevator was graded, weighed, and then redirected through the elevator's maze of bucketed belts and chutes into a bin that contained grain of the same grade. Two dozen wagonloads might fill one bin, which in turn, provided about enough grain to fill two boxcars. At times, when grain was arriving faster than the elevator could handle it, grain buyers operated "on track," purchasing whatever arrived and shoveling it straight from the farmer's wagon into a waiting boxcar. The terminal elevators where these shipments arrived were not terminals in the sense of a final destination. There, the same steps that had already been performed at the country elevator were repeated. Cars were unloaded by shoveling the grain out through the boxcar doors into a trackside grate or, in later years, by placing the car on a rotating carriage that tipped it back and forth to allow the car's contents to empty. Stored grain was later reloaded aboard ships or else poured back Into more empty boxcars for shipment to millers and other grain processors.

Since grain moved from every station along a line to the same milling centers or ports, it wasn't long before the idea of a chain of country elevators, one per town, which would funnel traffic more efficiently toward the market, was developed. The man generally credited with the idea was Frank Peavey, a native of Maine, who created a system of warehouses along the railroad line linking his terminal elevator in Sioux City, Iowa, with Yankton, South Dakota. In 1875, Peavey convinced officials of the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha Railroad to grant him grain elevator locations along all of their lines. However, it soon became apparent to railroad officials that the line elevator chains would have to be controlled. To do this, the railroads leased elevator sites in every town to rival line chain companies, thereby forcing them to compete with one another. The railroad, though, would only lease sites if the chain line companies agreed not to enter into similar agreements with competing railroad companies. When a new line of track was laid, it was common to number the elevator sites, which were 125-foot-wide lots along the tracks, so that line chain A got site 1 in every town, line chain B got site 2, and so on.

Had the grain business developed differently, it might have been that every town would have had a single large elevator. Instead, the result was a row of identical thirty-five-thousand-bushel elevators line up at trackside, distinguishable from one another only by the names painted high on the sides. Each elevator competed with the others by shaving its profit margin in order to attract business. It could not divert business to another railroad that might have served the same town without running the risk of losing the elevator site lease. Railroads controlled the elevators, as well as other line chain companies such as lumberyards and fuel dealers, by leasing instead of selling land along the tracks.

Line chain elevator companies, which had the capital necessary to erect dozens of elevators in a single season, hired contractors who specialized in elevator construction to build on every site the railroad had leased to them along a new line of track. Contractors used the same blueprints over and over, thereby creating the same elevators in every town. The better the country was for farming, and the larger the trade area of the town, the more elevators were built. After the construction was completed, local managers were hired to conduct company business at each site.

The railroads had the upper hand in controlling the line chains, but the farmer had to accept terms dictated by both the railroad and the elevator companies. As a result, farmers organized themselves Into marketing cooperatives to avoid dealing with the line chain companies altogether. Local area farmers found it relatively easy to purchase one or more country elevators from the line companies. Under the leadership of major marketing cooperatives, such as the "Farmers Union Grain Terminal Association" in the Dakotas, farmer-owned elevators eventually took on all the business operations of a line company, including ownership of some of the terminal elevators. The new system, which emerged in the first decades of the twentieth century, allowed farmers to share the profits that the lines had previously taken for themselves. The elevators also began to take on a new look as well. Old corporate identifications were painted over, and names like "Farmers Union Elevator," "Equity Grain Association," and "Producers Grain Coop" replaced them. No longer the private property of an alien corporation, the elevator increasingly became a friendly gathering place for the farmers who owned it.

In eastern South Dakota, elevators began to appear during the early 1880s when the railroads arrived and farmers began moving beyond subsistence operations and needed a place to store their surplus grain. Usually standing two or three stories high, they were built from wood that arrived on the same trains that brought the settlers. Within just a couple of decades, by 1903, there were 850 elevators in South Dakota. In 1968 that number had fallen to 450 elevator companies, and continued to fall to only 349 elevators in 1991. Today, it is estimated that probably only 100 wooden grain elevators are left in South Dakota.

The town of Arlington was founded in 1880 by the Dakota Central Railroad Company and named Nordland because of the numerous Norwegian settlers in the area. The post office was established as Nordland, but the Western Town Lot Company objected to the name, stating that it would mislead other settlers to think that the town was a Norwegian settlement. In 1884, the county commissions selected Denver as the new name and it was adopted by the town on February 15. However, the Post Office Department refused to accept Denver as the new name, so in 1885 the commissioners named the town Arlington, for Arlington, Virginia. Due to all the name changes, for a short time there were three names in existence at the same time; Nordland for the post office, Denver for the railroad station, and Arlington for the town. By 1891 the town had grown to a population of 400 and had numerous businesses and merchants. The town had 8 general merchandise stores, 2 drug stores, 2 millineries, 2 blacksmiths, 2 restaurants, 5 grain elevators, 2 doctors, 2 churches, as well as a grocery, a bank, meat market, wagon shop, furniture store, harness shop, hotel, flour mill, lumber yard, book and variety store, barber dray line, livery stable, the Arlington Sun newspaper, a lawyer, photographer, and a grade school.

The Central Dakota Flouring Mill Grain Elevator was built, according to documentation, in 1904, However, some local sources believe that it might have been built earlier, and could be the flour mill that was listed in the 1891 inventory of businesses. The southeastern section of the building, the middle section, the scale and driveway, and the western half of the front one-story office extension were built as the original mill. The southeastern most section of the elevator was where the flour milling was done, with the adjacent cribbed middle section being where the grain was stored and cleaned prior to the milling process. The northwestern cribbed annex which is used for additional grain storage was built at a later, unknown date, but within the historic period. In 1908 the mill was closed and the property went into litigation until 1912 when it was purchased by Shane Brothers & Wilson from Philadelphia. This company owned the mill until the early 1920s, approximately 1923, when the mill was again closed. The building was purchased and became the Sheldon F. Reese Elevator until 1929, when it was acquired by George P. Sexauer of the Sexauer Company. The Sexauer Company, based in Brookings, was historically one of South Dakota's largest grain elevator operators. The Sexauer Company, who operated the mill as a country elevator while also doing seed cleaning and feed milling, owned the elevator until 1974 when it was purchased by H.M. Bennett. The elevator, however, sat idle until 1976 when Dakota Oat Processors purchased the property. Dakota Oat Processors made some modifications to the elevator, including remodeling the driveway and scale area in 1980. The side walls were made higher and the length of the driveway was almost doubled. Additionally, the one-story office extension was remodeled in 1982 with an addition on the front facade of the eastern portion and new vertical wood siding added over the original brick. The cement block boiler room to the east was built in 1985. Dakota Oat Processors owned the elevator until 1991, after which the elevator again sat idle until approximately 1997 when it was again sold.

The Central Dakota Flouring Mill Grain Elevator is a visible link to South Dakota's agricultural past. Agriculture is the basis for the local and regional economy, and as such is an extremely important aspect of the community. As part of the agricultural process, grain elevators are extremely significant because they are the main means by which farmers get their crops to market. The Central Dakota Flouring Mill Grain Elevator was, and is, an integral part of the agricultural process as it has served local farmers as a principal buying and transportation station for their cash grain crops for nearly 100 years.

Building Description

The Central Dakota Flouring Mill Grain Elevator is located in the town of Arlington, in Kingsbury County, South Dakota. The elevator is situated on East Elm Street, which is also US Highway 14, and is adjacent to the railroad tracks to the northeast. The elevator is a complex of three, four-story sections joined together, along with a driveway/scale area and a one-story office extension. The four-story sections are constructed of wood, covered with both corrugated and stone-faced imprinted metal siding.

The Central Dakota Flouring Mill Grain Elevator, which was constructed in 1904, is a complex of three, four-story sections joined together, along with a driveway/scale area and a one-story office extension. The elevator is located parallel to East Elm Street, which is also US Highway 14, and is oriented from the northwest to the southeast. The southeastern and middle sections are connected to each other by a common wall, while the northwestern section is a separate, stand-alone structure connected to the other two by a walkway and pipes. The foundation of the three sections and the driveway/scale area is concrete, while the one-story office extension on the southwest facade has a brick foundation on the western half and concrete on the east. The three, four-story sections are built of wood and covered with metal siding. The middle and northwestern sections are square in plan, have cribbed construction and are covered with corrugated metal siding. The southeastern section, though, is rectangular and of wood frame construction that is covered with pressed tin siding that is imprinted with the shape of stone blocks. The tin siding is attached in sheets that are four courses high and five blocks wide, with metal flashing on the edges. All three sections have side gable roofs covered with metal. The northwestern section has a monitor atop the roof, and the middle section also has a variety of cyclone dust collectors, walkways, and stacked monitors on its roof.

From the southwest-facing facade all three, four-story sections are visible as well as the driveway/scale area and the one-story office extension. On this elevation of the northwestern section is a protruding metal spout for loading grain, and two windows in the monitor. The middle section is a solid wall with no openings. The southeastern section has four windows that have been filled in, two each on the top two stories, located near the edges of the structure. The one-and-a-half story rectangular-shaped driveway/scale area section is attached to the middle and southeastern sections. The driveway and scale area has a metal shed roof, walls covered with newer corrugated metal siding, and overhead roll-up metal vehicle doors at each end. Attached to the southwest elevation of the driveway/scale section is a one-story office extension with a very low-pitched cross-hipped asphalt shingle roof. The office extension is slightly "L" shaped, created from an addition on the front facade of the eastern portion. The foundation is brick, except for the projecting section on the eastern half which has a concrete foundation. The entire structure is covered with vertical weatherboard siding. The glass entry door, accessed by a set of wooden stairs with a landing, is located in the western portion of the structure near the junction where the eastern section extends out. Located on all three exposed elevations of the office section are a series of square and rectangular-shaped one-over-one aluminum windows.

The northwest elevation is comprised of the "side" of the northwestern section. From this viewpoint the monitor is very visible, rising up from the center of the gabled roof. The monitor also has a gable roof, and a large window opening, which has been filled in with what appears to be wood, is located in the end of the monitor area. The remnants of a faded painted sign are visible on this elevation of the section. The letters "SO-KO-TA" arch over a circle that contains the profile of an Indian wearing a feather headdress, and below the circle is the word "PRODUCTS." It is unknown exactly what years the grain elevator went by this name, but from documentation and old photographs, it is speculated that the sign was probably painted during the ownership of the Sexauer Company from 1929-1974.

The northeast elevation of the section faces the railroad tracks and is essentially the backside of the elevator. The northwest section has two windows in the monitor and no other openings. The middle section contains a large sliding track door on the first story but no other openings. The southeast section on this elevation contains two windows on each of the four stories, located near the edges of the section, except for the first story which contains one window and a sliding track door. Some of the windows have been filled in with wood or metal.

The southeast elevation is comprised of the "end" of the southeast section. The elevation is a solid wall, with no window or door openings. Also visible are the southeast elevations of the driveway/scale section and the office extension. Connected to this elevation of the southeast section by pipes is a low, flat-roofed, one-story cement block boiler room that was constructed in 1985. There is a single, metal pedestrian door in the northwest elevation and a metal vent in the southwest elevation of the boiler room.

The interior of the driveway/scale area still retains much of its original material. The northeastern wall has the exposed wooden weatherboard and wooden cribbing of the southeastern and middle sections. Extending from the wall is a series of metal spouts for loading grain into wagons and later trucks. There are also wooden ladders attached to the wall to access upper stories and a series of pedestrian doors. The doors lead into a series of interconnected rooms that house various equipment and offices. Located in the southwestern wall of the driveway/scale area is a window and door leading into the front office extension. The office extension is a large, carpeted room.

In the early 1980s, there was a series of alterations made to the elevator. The driveway/scale area was remodeled in 1980, when the side walls were made higher, the length of the driveway was almost doubled, and the roof was replaced. Additionally, the one-story office extension was remodeled in 1982 with an addition on the facade of the eastern portion and new vertical wood siding added over the original brick. A cement block boiler room to the east was built in 1985. The alterations, however, have not detracted from the integrity of the elevator. The remodeled driveway/scale area is still located in the same place, and although it was increased in height and length, its massing is still smaller than the large grain elevator sections which continue to remain the main focus of the structure.