fbpx
Wikipedia

Grain elevator

A grain elevator is a facility designed to stockpile or store grain. In the grain trade, the term "grain elevator" also describes a tower containing a bucket elevator or a pneumatic conveyor, which scoops up grain from a lower level and deposits it in a silo or other storage facility.

In most cases, the term "grain elevator" also describes the entire elevator complex, including receiving and testing offices, weighbridges, and storage facilities. It may also mean organizations that operate or control several individual elevators, in different locations. In Australia, the term describes only the lifting mechanism.

Before the advent of the grain elevator, grain was usually handled in bags rather than in bulk (large quantities of loose grain). Dart's Elevator was a major innovation. It was invented by Joseph Dart, a merchant, and Robert Dunbar, an engineer, in 1842 and 1843, in Buffalo, New York. Using the steam-powered flour mills of Oliver Evans as their model, they invented the marine leg, which scooped loose grain out of the hulls of ships and elevated it to the top of a marine tower.[1]

The American Elevator and Grain Trade periodical front cover of 1904

Early grain elevators and bins were often built of framed or cribbed wood, and were prone to fire. Grain-elevator bins, tanks, and silos are now usually made of steel or reinforced concrete. Bucket elevators are used to lift grain to a distributor or consignor, from which it falls through spouts and/or conveyors and into one or more bins, silos, or tanks in a facility. When desired, silos, bins, and tanks are emptied by gravity flow, sweep augers, and conveyors. As grain is emptied from bins, tanks, and silos, it is conveyed, blended, and weighted into trucks, railroad cars, or barges for shipment.

Usage and definitions

 
Saskatchewan Wheat Pool No. 7, Thunder Bay, Ontario

In Australian English, the term "grain elevator" is reserved for elevator towers, while a receival and storage building or complex is distinguished by the formal term "receival point" or as a "wheat bin" or "silo". Large-scale grain receival, storage, and logistics operations are known in Australia as bulk handling.

In Canada, the term "grain elevator" is used to refer to a place where farmers sell grain into the global grain distribution system, and/or a place where the grain is moved into rail cars or ocean-going ships for transport. Specifically, several types of grain elevators are defined under Canadian law, in the Canadian Grain Act, section 2.[2]

  • Primary elevators (called "country elevators" before 1971) receive grain directly from producers for storage, forwarding, or both.
  • Process elevators (called "mill elevators" before 1971) receive and store grain for direct manufacture or processing into other products.
  • Terminal elevators receive grain on or after official inspection and weighing and clean, store, and treat grain before moving it forward.
  • Transfer elevators (including "Eastern elevators" from the pre-1971 classification) transfer grain that has been officially inspected and weighed at another elevator. In the Eastern Division, transfer elevators also receive, clean, and store eastern or foreign grain.

History

 
The Port Perry mill and grain elevator, circa 1930: Built in 1873, it is the oldest grain elevator in Canada and remains a major landmark to this day. The line of the PW&PP Railway can be seen in the foreground.
 
Typical "wood-cribbed" design for grain elevators throughout Western Canada, a common design used from the early 1900s to mid-1980s: The former Ogilvie Flour Mill elevator in Wrentham, Alberta, was built in 1925.

Both necessity and the prospect of making money gave birth to the steam-powered grain elevator in Buffalo, New York, in 1843. Due to the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, Buffalo enjoyed a unique position in American geography. It stood at the intersection of two great all-water routes; one extended from New York Harbor, up the Hudson River to Albany, and beyond it, the Port of Buffalo; the other comprised the Great Lakes, which could theoretically take boaters in any direction they wished to go (north to Canada, west to Michigan or Wisconsin, south to Toledo and Cleveland, or east to the Atlantic Ocean). All through the 1830s, Buffalo benefited tremendously from its position. In particular, it was the recipient of most of the increasing quantities of grain (mostly wheat) that was being grown on farms in Ohio and Indiana, and shipped on Lake Erie for trans-shipment to the Erie Canal. If Buffalo had not been there, or when things got backed up there, that grain would have been loaded onto boats at Cincinnati and shipped down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.[1]

By 1842, Buffalo's port facilities clearly had become antiquated. They still relied upon techniques that had been in use since the European Middle Ages; work teams of stevedores use block and tackles and their own backs to unload or load each sack of grain that had been stored ashore or in the boat's hull. Several days, sometimes even a week, were needed to serve a single grain-laden boat. Grain shipments were going down the Mississippi River, not over the Great Lakes/Erie Canal system.

A merchant named Joseph Dart Jr., is generally credited as being the one who adapted Oliver Evans' grain elevator (originally a manufacturing device) for use in a commercial framework (the trans-shipment of grain in bulk from lakers to canal boats), but the actual design and construction of the world's first steam-powered "grain storage and transfer warehouse" was executed by an engineer named Robert Dunbar. Thanks to the historic Dart's Elevator (operational on 1 June 1843), which worked almost seven times faster than its nonmechanized predecessors, Buffalo was able to keep pace with—and thus further stimulate—the rapid growth of American agricultural production in the 1840s and 1850s, but especially after the Civil War, with the coming of the railroads.[1]

 
A 1928 Burrus Elevator steel-reinforced concrete elevator with 123 silos shown just prior to demolition in 2004

The world's second and third grain elevators were built in Toledo, Ohio, and Brooklyn, New York, in 1847. These fledgling American cities were connected through an emerging international grain trade of unprecedented proportions. Grain shipments from farms in Ohio were loaded onto ships by elevators at Toledo; these ships were unloaded by elevators at Buffalo that shipped their grain to canal boats (and, later, rail cars), which were unloaded by elevators in Brooklyn, where the grain was either distributed to East Coast flour mills or loaded for further shipment to England, the Netherlands, or Germany. This eastern flow of grain, though, was matched by an equally important flow of people and capital in the opposite direction, that is, from east to west. Because of the money to be made in grain production, and of course, because of the existence of an all-water route to get there, increasing numbers of immigrants in Brooklyn came to Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois to become farmers. More farmers meant more prairies turned into farmlands, which in turn meant increased grain production, which of course meant that more grain elevators would have to be built in places such as Toledo, Buffalo, and Brooklyn (and Cleveland, Chicago, and Duluth). Through this loop of productivity set in motion by the invention of the grain elevator, the United States became a major international producer of wheat, corn, and oats.[1]

In the early 20th century, concern arose about monopolistic practices in the grain elevator industry, leading to testimony before the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1906.[3] This led to several grain elevators being burned down in Nebraska, allegedly in protest.[3]

 
Silos connected to a grain elevator on a farm in Israel

Today, grain elevators are a common sight in the grain-growing areas of the world, such as the North American prairies. Larger terminal elevators are found at distribution centers, such as Chicago and Thunder Bay, Ontario, where grain is sent for processing, or loaded aboard trains or ships to go further afield.

Buffalo, New York, the world's largest grain port from the 1850s until the first half of the 20th century, once had the United States' largest capacity for the storage of grain in over 30 concrete grain elevators located along the inner and outer harbors. While several are still in productive use, many of those that remain are presently idle. In a nascent trend, some of the city's inactive capacity has recently come back online, with an ethanol plant started in 2007 using one of the previously mothballed elevators to store corn. In the early 20th century, Buffalo's grain elevators inspired modernist architects such as Le Corbusier, who exclaimed, "The first fruits of the new age!" when he first saw them. Buffalo's grain elevators have been documented for the Historic American Engineering Record and added to the National Register of Historic Places. Currently, Enid, Oklahoma, holds the title of most grain storage capacity in the United States.

 
Corrugated-steel grain bins and cable-guyed grain elevator at a grain elevator in Hemingway, South Carolina

In farming communities, each town had one or more small grain elevators that served the local growers. The classic grain elevator was constructed with wooden cribbing and had nine or more larger square or rectangular bins arranged in 3 × 3 or 3 × 4 or 4 × 4 or more patterns. Wooden-cribbed elevators usually had a driveway with truck scale and office on one side, a rail line on the other side, and additional grain-storage annex bins on either side.

In more recent times with improved transportation, centralized and much larger elevators serve many farms. Some of them are quite large. Two elevators in Kansas (one in Hutchinson and one in Wichita) are half a mile long. The loss of the grain elevators from small towns is often considered a great change in their identity, and efforts to preserve them as heritage structures are made. At the same time, many larger grain farms have their own grain-handling facilities for storage and loading onto trucks.

 
Old wooden cribbed grain elevator and livestock feedmill in Estherville, Iowa

Elevator operators buy grain from farmers, either for cash or at a contracted price, and then sell futures contracts for the same quantity of grain, usually each day. They profit through the narrowing "basis", that is, the difference between the local cash price, and the futures price, that occurs at certain times of the year.

Before economical truck transportation was available, grain elevator operators sometimes used their purchasing power to control prices. This was especially easy, since farmers often had only one elevator within a reasonable distance of their farms. This led some governments to take over the administration of grain elevators. An example of this is the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool. For the same reason, many elevators were purchased by cooperatives.

 
These houses in Halifax, Nova Scotia were constructed in the 1990s long after the elevator had been constructed and are vulnerable due to their location. In the summer of 2003, an explosion at this elevator sparked a fire that took seven hours to extinguish.[4]

A recent problem with grain elevators is the need to provide separate storage for ordinary and genetically modified grain to reduce the risk of accidental mixing of the two.

In the past, grain elevators sometimes experienced silo explosions. Fine powder from the millions of grains passing through the facility would accumulate and mix with the oxygen in the air. A spark could spread from one floating particle to the other, creating a chain reaction that would destroy the entire structure. (This dispersed-fuel explosion is the mechanism behind fuel-air bombs.) To prevent this, elevators have very rigorous rules against smoking or any other open flame. Many elevators also have various devices installed to maximize ventilation, safeguards against overheating in belt conveyors, legs, bearings, and explosion-proof electrical devices such as electric motors, switches, and lighting.

 
Jump-formed concrete annex silos on the left and slip-formed concrete mainhouse at an elevator facility in Edon, Ohio

Grain elevators in small Canadian communities often had the name of the community painted on two sides of the elevator in large block letters, with the name of the elevator operator emblazoned on the other two sides. This made identification of the community easier for rail operators (and incidentally, for lost drivers and pilots). The old community name often remained on an elevator long after the town had either disappeared or been amalgamated into another community; the grain elevator at Ellerslie, Alberta, remained marked with its old community name until it was demolished, which took place more than 20 years after the village had been annexed by Edmonton.

One of the major historical trends in the grain trade has been the closure of many smaller elevators, and the consolidation the grain trade to fewer places and among fewer companies. For example, in 1961, 1,642 "country elevators" (the smallest type) were in Alberta, holding 3,452,240 tonnes (3,805,440 short tons) of grain. By 2010. only 79 "primary elevators" (as they are now known) remained, holding 1,613,960 tonnes (1,779,090 short tons).

In 2017, the United States had 0.88 cubic kilometres (25 billion US bushels) of storage capacity, a growth of 25% in the previous decade.[5]

Elevator Alley

 
A view along Buffalo's "Elevator Alley".

The city of Buffalo is not only the birthplace of the modern grain elevator, but also has the world's largest number of extant examples.[6] A number of the city's historic elevators are clustered along "Elevator Alley", a narrow stretch of the Buffalo River immediately adjacent to the harbor. The alley runs under Ohio Street and along Childs Street in the city's First Ward neighborhood.[7]

Elevator row

In Canada, the term "elevator row" refers to a row of four or more wood-crib prairie grain elevators.

In the early pioneer days of Western Canada's prairie towns, when a good farming spot was settled, many people wanted to make money by building their own grain elevators. This brought in droves of private grain companies. Towns boasted dozens of elevator companies, which all stood in a row along the railway tracks. If a town were lucky enough to have two railways, it was to be known as the next Montreal. Many elevator rows had two or more elevators of the same company. Small towns bragged of their large elevator rows in promotional pamphlets to attract settlers. With so much competition in the 1920s, consolidation began almost immediately, and many small companies were merged or absorbed into larger companies.

In the mid-1990s, with the cost of grain so low, many private elevator companies once again had to merge, this time causing thousands of "prairie sentinels" to be torn down. Because so many grain elevators have been torn down, Canada has only two surviving elevator rows; one located in Inglis, Manitoba, and the other in Warner, Alberta. The Inglis Grain Elevators National Historic Site has been protected as a National Historic Sites of Canada. The Warner elevator row is, as of 2019, not designated a historic site, and is still in use as commercial grain elevators.

Elevator companies

 
Lake Shore Elevator seen in Toledo, Ohio in 1895

Australia

Canada

All companies operating elevators in Canada are licensed by the Canadian Grain Commission.[8]

Sweden

  • In Sweden, the vast majority of grain elevators belong to the Lantmännen co-operative movement, owned by grain-growing farmers.

United States

 
General Mills grain-distribution facility detail, Idaho Falls, Idaho

Notable grain elevators

During the Battle of Stalingrad, one particularly well-defended Soviet strongpoint was known simply as "the Grain Elevator" and was strategically important to both sides.

This is a list of grain elevators that are either in the process of becoming heritage sites or museums, or have been preserved for future generations.

Canada

Alberta

 
Home Grain Co. wooden cribbed elevator at the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village in Alberta
 
Alberta Wheat Pool elevator Ltd. wooden cribbed elevator at the Scandia Eastern Irrigation District Museum in Scandia, Alberta

British Columbia

Manitoba

Ontario

  • Scugog – Canada's oldest grain elevator and the second oldest in all of the Americas
  • Stiver Mills – one of a few surviving grain elevators in Ontario, built 1916 and used until 1968 and now a farmers' market

Quebec

  • Silo No. 5, Montreal – This grain elevator was completed in four stages from 1906 to 1959 and was abandoned in 1994. With the demolition of Silo No. 1 and Silo No. 2, Silo No. 5 is now, along with the Old Port’s conveyor pier tower, the last vestige of Old Montreal’s 20th-century harbour panorama.[28]

Saskatchewan

South Africa

Switzerland

 
Swissmill Tower, upper Limmat Valley in the Canton of Zürich

United Kingdom

The Manchester Ship Canal grain elevator was completed in 1898. It had a capacity of 40,000 tons and its automatic conveying and spouting system could distribute grain into 226 bins.[32]

United States

 
Wheeler Elevator, Buffalo
 
Ranchway Feeds mill and elevator, Fort Collins, Colorado
 
Circle B grain elevator, Concordia, Kansas
 
Historic Cooperative Elevator, a row of corrugated steel hopper bottom bins on the left and cribbed annex bins on the right, Crowell, Texas

Baltimore, Maryland

Buffalo, New York

  • American Grain Complex, built between 1905 and 1931
  • Cargill Pool Elevator, previously named the Saskatchewan Cooperative Elevator was built in 1925 offered a total holding capacity of 74,000 cubic metres (2.1 million US bushels) in 135 bins
  • Cargill Superior elevator, marked as Cargill "S", built between 1914 and 1925
  • Concrete-Central Elevator, Buffalo, New York – The largest transfer elevator in the world at the time of its completion in 1917
  • Connecting Terminal, Clearly visible from across canalside and the Commercial Slip the structure is now used for boat storage
  • General Mills Plant, or "The Frontier Elevator" General Mills Buffalo factory is a large scale grain mill and cereal production facility, most notably producing Gold Medal brand flour, Wheaties, Cheerios, and other General Mills brand cereals
  • Great Northern Elevator, built in 1897 by the Great Northern Railroad; currently being demolished
  • Lake & Rail Grain Elevator, part of the "elevator alley" – The Lake and Rail produces over 2,700,00 pounds of flour a day
  • Marine A grain elevator, also part of the "elevator alley" and across from the Lake & Rail Grain Elevator
  • The Standard Elevator – named after the Standard Milling Company and built in 1926
  • Wheeler Elevator – also known as the Agway/GLF East Work House, built in 1908
  • Wollenberg Grain and Seed Elevator – wooden "country style" elevator formerly located in Buffalo, New York; destroyed by fire in October 2006

Wassaic, New York

  • Maxon Mills – built in 1954 and remained in active use as a feed elevator until the 1980s. The mill was placed on the New York State Register of Historic Places and restored in the early 2000s. It is currently used as a contemporary art exhibition space by The Wassaic Project

Illinois

Iowa

Minnesota

North Dakota

Oklahoma

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

 
Reading Company Grain Elevator near Center City, Philadelphia, now converted into offices

South Dakota

  • Zip Feed Tower, tallest occupiable structure in South Dakota from its construction in 1956–1957 until its demolition in December 2005

Virginia

  • Groh's Grain Elevator, elevator located near the York River in Clay Bank, Virginia. The concrete elevator with 14 silos was built in 1950 at a cost of $150,000 (equal to over $1.6 million in 2021) by Louis Groh and Son, Inc.[34] The waterfront property containing the long abandoned elevator is owned by a local physician who has installed a wind turbine atop the towering structure to generate electricity.[35]
  • Sewell's Point grain elevator, export elevator built by the city of Norfolk in 1922 to help the port of Norfolk better compete with other East Coast ports by providing a publicly owned facility to store and load grain at reasonable rates. It was sold to the Norfolk and Western railroad in 1929, and leased from N&W by Continental grain in 1952. The elevator originally held 26,000 m3 (750,000 US bu) but was later expanded to 120,000 m3 (3,500,000 US bu). The elevator was taken over by Cargill in the late 1980s and abandoned around the turn of the 21st century. The elevator was demolished by Norfolk Southern in 2008.[36]
  • Southern States silos, a grain elevator in Richmond, Virginia originally built in the 1940s by Cargill, and currently leased by Perdue Farms is the tallest structure south of the James River in the city of Richmond. The elevator was the site of the 3rd RVA Street Art Festival.[37][38]

Wisconsin

Wyoming

Elevator explosions

Given a large enough suspension of combustible flour or grain dust in the air, a significant explosion can occur. A historical example of the destructive power of grain explosions is the 1878 explosion of the Washburn "A" Mill in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which killed 18, leveled two nearby mills, damaged many others, and caused a destructive fire that gutted much of the nearby milling district. (The Washburn "A" mill was later rebuilt and continued to be used until 1965.) Another example occurred in 1998, when the DeBruce grain elevator in Wichita, Kansas, exploded and killed seven people.[39] A recent example is an explosion on October 29, 2011 at the Bartlett Grain Company in Atchison, Kansas. The death toll was six people. Two more men received severe burns, but the remaining four were not hurt.[40]

Almost any finely divided organic substance becomes an explosive material when dispersed as an air suspension; hence, a very fine flour is dangerously explosive in air suspension. This poses a significant risk when milling grain to produce flour, so mills go to great lengths to remove sources of sparks. These measures include carefully sifting the grain before it is milled or ground to remove stones, which could strike sparks from the millstones, and the use of magnets to remove metallic debris able to strike sparks.

The earliest recorded flour explosion took place in an Italian mill in 1785, but many have occurred since. These two references give numbers of recorded flour and dust explosions in the United States in 1994:[41] and 1997[42] In the ten-year period up to and including 1997, there were 129 explosions.

Media

 
Charles Demuth: My Egypt (1927)

Canadian Prairie grain elevators were the subjects of the National Film Board of Canada documentaries Grain Elevator[43] and Death of a Skyline.[44]

During the sixth season of the History Channel series Ax Men, one of the featured crews takes on the job of dismantling the Globe Elevator in Wisconsin. This structure was the largest grain-storage facility in the world when it was built in the 1880s.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d Brown, William J. (2013). American Colossus: The Grain Elevator 1843 to 1943. Colossal Books. ISBN 978-0578012612.
  2. ^ . Grainscanada.gc.ca. 2010-01-12. Archived from the original on 2013-11-20. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
  3. ^ a b Testimony taken by Interstate Commerce Commission, October 15 – November 23, 1906, in matter of relations of common carriers to the grain trade, 59th Congress, Senate Document #278, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1907, pp. 28, 34–35.
  4. ^ "Grain elevator explosion rocks Halifax". CBC News. 2003-08-08.
  5. ^ Huffstutter, P. J.; Plume, Karl (11 April 2017). "Grains piled on runways, parking lots, fields amid global glut". Reuters. Retrieved 12 April 2017.
  6. ^ . Urban Design Project. State University of New York at Buffalo. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 22 November 2013.
  7. ^ Cook, Michael; Papciak, Bryan (2010). Elevator Alley. Furnace Press. ISBN 9780977274260.
  8. ^ "licences". Grainscanada.gc.ca. 2002-05-05. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
  9. ^ "Vanishing Sentinels". Vanishingsentinels.blogspot.com. 2005-12-30. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
  10. ^ . 2009-08-16. Archived from the original on August 16, 2009. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
  11. ^ "Alberta Central Railroad Museum". Abcentralrailway.com. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
  12. ^ "Castor elevator". Albertasource.ca. 2010-12-08. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
  13. ^ Dean Tiegs. . Canadiannorthern.ca. Archived from the original on 2013-10-03. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
  14. ^ "Ritchie Mill – Edmonton". Rmlo.com. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
  15. ^ "Heritage Acres". Heritage Acres. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
  16. ^ "Calgary Heritage Park". Heritagepark.ca. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
  17. ^ "Alberta Legacy Development Society – Leduc". Leducelevator.com. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
  18. ^ . Mayerthorpe.ca. 2012-12-06. Archived from the original on 2016-04-04. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
  19. ^ "Meeting Creek elevator". Canadiannorthern.ca. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
  20. ^ "Canadian Grain Elevator Discovery Center – Nanton". Nantonelevators.com. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
  21. ^ . Townlife.com. 2008-09-24. Archived from the original on 2016-12-24. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
  22. ^ "South Peace Centennial Museum". Spcm.ca. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
  23. ^ St. Albert Grain Elevator Park July 21, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  24. ^ St. Albert elevator July 21, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  25. ^ . Boomtowntrail.com. Archived from the original on 2012-03-01. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
  26. ^ "Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village". Tapor.ualberta.ca. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
  27. ^ Cook, Ramsay (2005). Dictionary of Canadian Biography: De 1921 à 1930 - Ramsay Cook, Jean Hamelin. ISBN 9780802090874. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
  28. ^ Laure Emery (2013). "Silo à grain no 5". Répertoire du patrimoine - culturel du Québec (in French). Retrieved 21 November 2020.
  29. ^ . Sukanenmuseum.ca. Archived from the original on 2013-02-18. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
  30. ^ . Archived from the original on 2012-06-22. Retrieved 2012-04-09.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  31. ^ Florian Niedermann (2016-04-27). "Der Swissmill-Tower spaltet Zürich" (in German). Limmattaler Zeitung. Retrieved 2016-05-19.
  32. ^ Otter, Chris (2020). Diet for a large planet. USA: University of Chicago Press. p. 22. ISBN 978-0-226-69710-9.
  33. ^ "Climb Up OKC". ClimbUpGym.com. Climb Up, LLC.
  34. ^ "GROH v. COMMISSIONER | 15 T.C.M. 538 (1956) | etcm5381445". Leagle.com. 1956-05-03. Retrieved 2022-08-12.
  35. ^ "Clay Bank resident harnesses wind energy – Gazette Journal".
  36. ^ "From bust to boom: Deserted Norfolk facility to be exploded".
  37. ^ "RVA Street Art Festival headed to Manchester silos". Retrieved 11 December 2016.
  38. ^ "Third RVA Street Art Festival brings flood of creativity to Manchester". 19 April 2016. Retrieved 11 December 2016.
  39. ^ . City of Wichita. City of Wichita. 1998. Archived from the original on February 12, 2008. Retrieved 2007-06-22.
  40. ^ Sutton, Joe (October 30, 2011). "3 killed, 3 missing after Kansas grain elevator explosion". CNN.com.
  41. ^ (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-01-24. Retrieved 2007-06-23.
  42. ^ (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-01-24. Retrieved 2007-06-23.
  43. ^ "Grain Elevator". Documentary film. National Film Board of Canada. Retrieved 22 July 2010.
  44. ^ Smith, Bryan (2003). "Death of a Skyline". National Film Board of Canada. Archived from the original on 2007-12-07. Retrieved 2009-03-19.

External links

  • Grain elevators in West Texas
  • Complete Photographic Record of the Remaining Canadian Prairie Grain Elevators
  • Buffalo Grain Elevators: A bibliography by The Buffalo History Museum
  • Bruce Selyem, Grain Elevator Photographer
  • Pixelgrain: Mapping Transition in the Canadian Prairies
  • "Inside a Modern Grain Elevator" Popular Science Monthly, February 1930, p. 45. Drawing of how 1930s grain elevator worked at sea ports.
  • Our Grandfathers' Grain Elevators blog with specifications of reinforced-concrete elevators

grain, elevator, this, article, written, like, personal, reflection, personal, essay, argumentative, essay, that, states, wikipedia, editor, personal, feelings, presents, original, argument, about, topic, please, help, improve, rewriting, encyclopedic, style, . This article is written like a personal reflection personal essay or argumentative essay that states a Wikipedia editor s personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style December 2014 Learn how and when to remove this template message A grain elevator is a facility designed to stockpile or store grain In the grain trade the term grain elevator also describes a tower containing a bucket elevator or a pneumatic conveyor which scoops up grain from a lower level and deposits it in a silo or other storage facility Grain elevatorCargill Pool grain elevator Buffalo New YorkIn most cases the term grain elevator also describes the entire elevator complex including receiving and testing offices weighbridges and storage facilities It may also mean organizations that operate or control several individual elevators in different locations In Australia the term describes only the lifting mechanism Before the advent of the grain elevator grain was usually handled in bags rather than in bulk large quantities of loose grain Dart s Elevator was a major innovation It was invented by Joseph Dart a merchant and Robert Dunbar an engineer in 1842 and 1843 in Buffalo New York Using the steam powered flour mills of Oliver Evans as their model they invented the marine leg which scooped loose grain out of the hulls of ships and elevated it to the top of a marine tower 1 The American Elevator and Grain Trade periodical front cover of 1904 Early grain elevators and bins were often built of framed or cribbed wood and were prone to fire Grain elevator bins tanks and silos are now usually made of steel or reinforced concrete Bucket elevators are used to lift grain to a distributor or consignor from which it falls through spouts and or conveyors and into one or more bins silos or tanks in a facility When desired silos bins and tanks are emptied by gravity flow sweep augers and conveyors As grain is emptied from bins tanks and silos it is conveyed blended and weighted into trucks railroad cars or barges for shipment Contents 1 Usage and definitions 2 History 3 Elevator Alley 4 Elevator row 5 Elevator companies 5 1 Australia 5 2 Canada 5 3 Sweden 5 4 United States 6 Notable grain elevators 6 1 Canada 6 1 1 Alberta 6 1 2 British Columbia 6 1 3 Manitoba 6 1 4 Ontario 6 1 5 Quebec 6 1 6 Saskatchewan 6 2 South Africa 6 3 Switzerland 6 4 United Kingdom 6 5 United States 6 5 1 Baltimore Maryland 6 5 2 Buffalo New York 6 5 3 Wassaic New York 6 5 4 Illinois 6 5 5 Iowa 6 5 6 Minnesota 6 5 7 North Dakota 6 5 8 Oklahoma 6 5 9 Philadelphia Pennsylvania 6 5 10 South Dakota 6 5 11 Virginia 6 5 12 Wisconsin 6 5 13 Wyoming 7 Elevator explosions 8 Media 9 See also 10 References 11 External linksUsage and definitions Edit Saskatchewan Wheat Pool No 7 Thunder Bay Ontario In Australian English the term grain elevator is reserved for elevator towers while a receival and storage building or complex is distinguished by the formal term receival point or as a wheat bin or silo Large scale grain receival storage and logistics operations are known in Australia as bulk handling In Canada the term grain elevator is used to refer to a place where farmers sell grain into the global grain distribution system and or a place where the grain is moved into rail cars or ocean going ships for transport Specifically several types of grain elevators are defined under Canadian law in the Canadian Grain Act section 2 2 Primary elevators called country elevators before 1971 receive grain directly from producers for storage forwarding or both Process elevators called mill elevators before 1971 receive and store grain for direct manufacture or processing into other products Terminal elevators receive grain on or after official inspection and weighing and clean store and treat grain before moving it forward Transfer elevators including Eastern elevators from the pre 1971 classification transfer grain that has been officially inspected and weighed at another elevator In the Eastern Division transfer elevators also receive clean and store eastern or foreign grain History EditThis section needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed December 2014 Learn how and when to remove this template message The Port Perry mill and grain elevator circa 1930 Built in 1873 it is the oldest grain elevator in Canada and remains a major landmark to this day The line of the PW amp PP Railway can be seen in the foreground Typical wood cribbed design for grain elevators throughout Western Canada a common design used from the early 1900s to mid 1980s The former Ogilvie Flour Mill elevator in Wrentham Alberta was built in 1925 Both necessity and the prospect of making money gave birth to the steam powered grain elevator in Buffalo New York in 1843 Due to the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 Buffalo enjoyed a unique position in American geography It stood at the intersection of two great all water routes one extended from New York Harbor up the Hudson River to Albany and beyond it the Port of Buffalo the other comprised the Great Lakes which could theoretically take boaters in any direction they wished to go north to Canada west to Michigan or Wisconsin south to Toledo and Cleveland or east to the Atlantic Ocean All through the 1830s Buffalo benefited tremendously from its position In particular it was the recipient of most of the increasing quantities of grain mostly wheat that was being grown on farms in Ohio and Indiana and shipped on Lake Erie for trans shipment to the Erie Canal If Buffalo had not been there or when things got backed up there that grain would have been loaded onto boats at Cincinnati and shipped down the Mississippi River to New Orleans 1 By 1842 Buffalo s port facilities clearly had become antiquated They still relied upon techniques that had been in use since the European Middle Ages work teams of stevedores use block and tackles and their own backs to unload or load each sack of grain that had been stored ashore or in the boat s hull Several days sometimes even a week were needed to serve a single grain laden boat Grain shipments were going down the Mississippi River not over the Great Lakes Erie Canal system A merchant named Joseph Dart Jr is generally credited as being the one who adapted Oliver Evans grain elevator originally a manufacturing device for use in a commercial framework the trans shipment of grain in bulk from lakers to canal boats but the actual design and construction of the world s first steam powered grain storage and transfer warehouse was executed by an engineer named Robert Dunbar Thanks to the historic Dart s Elevator operational on 1 June 1843 which worked almost seven times faster than its nonmechanized predecessors Buffalo was able to keep pace with and thus further stimulate the rapid growth of American agricultural production in the 1840s and 1850s but especially after the Civil War with the coming of the railroads 1 A 1928 Burrus Elevator steel reinforced concrete elevator with 123 silos shown just prior to demolition in 2004 The world s second and third grain elevators were built in Toledo Ohio and Brooklyn New York in 1847 These fledgling American cities were connected through an emerging international grain trade of unprecedented proportions Grain shipments from farms in Ohio were loaded onto ships by elevators at Toledo these ships were unloaded by elevators at Buffalo that shipped their grain to canal boats and later rail cars which were unloaded by elevators in Brooklyn where the grain was either distributed to East Coast flour mills or loaded for further shipment to England the Netherlands or Germany This eastern flow of grain though was matched by an equally important flow of people and capital in the opposite direction that is from east to west Because of the money to be made in grain production and of course because of the existence of an all water route to get there increasing numbers of immigrants in Brooklyn came to Ohio Indiana and Illinois to become farmers More farmers meant more prairies turned into farmlands which in turn meant increased grain production which of course meant that more grain elevators would have to be built in places such as Toledo Buffalo and Brooklyn and Cleveland Chicago and Duluth Through this loop of productivity set in motion by the invention of the grain elevator the United States became a major international producer of wheat corn and oats 1 In the early 20th century concern arose about monopolistic practices in the grain elevator industry leading to testimony before the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1906 3 This led to several grain elevators being burned down in Nebraska allegedly in protest 3 Silos connected to a grain elevator on a farm in Israel Today grain elevators are a common sight in the grain growing areas of the world such as the North American prairies Larger terminal elevators are found at distribution centers such as Chicago and Thunder Bay Ontario where grain is sent for processing or loaded aboard trains or ships to go further afield Buffalo New York the world s largest grain port from the 1850s until the first half of the 20th century once had the United States largest capacity for the storage of grain in over 30 concrete grain elevators located along the inner and outer harbors While several are still in productive use many of those that remain are presently idle In a nascent trend some of the city s inactive capacity has recently come back online with an ethanol plant started in 2007 using one of the previously mothballed elevators to store corn In the early 20th century Buffalo s grain elevators inspired modernist architects such as Le Corbusier who exclaimed The first fruits of the new age when he first saw them Buffalo s grain elevators have been documented for the Historic American Engineering Record and added to the National Register of Historic Places Currently Enid Oklahoma holds the title of most grain storage capacity in the United States Corrugated steel grain bins and cable guyed grain elevator at a grain elevator in Hemingway South Carolina In farming communities each town had one or more small grain elevators that served the local growers The classic grain elevator was constructed with wooden cribbing and had nine or more larger square or rectangular bins arranged in 3 3 or 3 4 or 4 4 or more patterns Wooden cribbed elevators usually had a driveway with truck scale and office on one side a rail line on the other side and additional grain storage annex bins on either side In more recent times with improved transportation centralized and much larger elevators serve many farms Some of them are quite large Two elevators in Kansas one in Hutchinson and one in Wichita are half a mile long The loss of the grain elevators from small towns is often considered a great change in their identity and efforts to preserve them as heritage structures are made At the same time many larger grain farms have their own grain handling facilities for storage and loading onto trucks Old wooden cribbed grain elevator and livestock feedmill in Estherville Iowa Elevator operators buy grain from farmers either for cash or at a contracted price and then sell futures contracts for the same quantity of grain usually each day They profit through the narrowing basis that is the difference between the local cash price and the futures price that occurs at certain times of the year Before economical truck transportation was available grain elevator operators sometimes used their purchasing power to control prices This was especially easy since farmers often had only one elevator within a reasonable distance of their farms This led some governments to take over the administration of grain elevators An example of this is the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool For the same reason many elevators were purchased by cooperatives These houses in Halifax Nova Scotia were constructed in the 1990s long after the elevator had been constructed and are vulnerable due to their location In the summer of 2003 an explosion at this elevator sparked a fire that took seven hours to extinguish 4 A recent problem with grain elevators is the need to provide separate storage for ordinary and genetically modified grain to reduce the risk of accidental mixing of the two In the past grain elevators sometimes experienced silo explosions Fine powder from the millions of grains passing through the facility would accumulate and mix with the oxygen in the air A spark could spread from one floating particle to the other creating a chain reaction that would destroy the entire structure This dispersed fuel explosion is the mechanism behind fuel air bombs To prevent this elevators have very rigorous rules against smoking or any other open flame Many elevators also have various devices installed to maximize ventilation safeguards against overheating in belt conveyors legs bearings and explosion proof electrical devices such as electric motors switches and lighting Jump formed concrete annex silos on the left and slip formed concrete mainhouse at an elevator facility in Edon Ohio Grain elevators in small Canadian communities often had the name of the community painted on two sides of the elevator in large block letters with the name of the elevator operator emblazoned on the other two sides This made identification of the community easier for rail operators and incidentally for lost drivers and pilots The old community name often remained on an elevator long after the town had either disappeared or been amalgamated into another community the grain elevator at Ellerslie Alberta remained marked with its old community name until it was demolished which took place more than 20 years after the village had been annexed by Edmonton One of the major historical trends in the grain trade has been the closure of many smaller elevators and the consolidation the grain trade to fewer places and among fewer companies For example in 1961 1 642 country elevators the smallest type were in Alberta holding 3 452 240 tonnes 3 805 440 short tons of grain By 2010 only 79 primary elevators as they are now known remained holding 1 613 960 tonnes 1 779 090 short tons In 2017 the United States had 0 88 cubic kilometres 25 billion US bushels of storage capacity a growth of 25 in the previous decade 5 Elevator Alley Edit A view along Buffalo s Elevator Alley The city of Buffalo is not only the birthplace of the modern grain elevator but also has the world s largest number of extant examples 6 A number of the city s historic elevators are clustered along Elevator Alley a narrow stretch of the Buffalo River immediately adjacent to the harbor The alley runs under Ohio Street and along Childs Street in the city s First Ward neighborhood 7 Elevator row EditSee also Inglis Grain Elevators National Historic Site In Canada the term elevator row refers to a row of four or more wood crib prairie grain elevators In the early pioneer days of Western Canada s prairie towns when a good farming spot was settled many people wanted to make money by building their own grain elevators This brought in droves of private grain companies Towns boasted dozens of elevator companies which all stood in a row along the railway tracks If a town were lucky enough to have two railways it was to be known as the next Montreal Many elevator rows had two or more elevators of the same company Small towns bragged of their large elevator rows in promotional pamphlets to attract settlers With so much competition in the 1920s consolidation began almost immediately and many small companies were merged or absorbed into larger companies In the mid 1990s with the cost of grain so low many private elevator companies once again had to merge this time causing thousands of prairie sentinels to be torn down Because so many grain elevators have been torn down Canada has only two surviving elevator rows one located in Inglis Manitoba and the other in Warner Alberta The Inglis Grain Elevators National Historic Site has been protected as a National Historic Sites of Canada The Warner elevator row is as of 2019 not designated a historic site and is still in use as commercial grain elevators Elevator companies Edit Lake Shore Elevator seen in Toledo Ohio in 1895 Australia Edit ABB Grain was founded as a mutual company the Australian Barley Board in 1939 by barley growers in South Australia and Victoria after demutualization it was acquired by Viterra see below in 2009 Australian Bulk Alliance a joint venture between ABB and Sumitomo operates facilities in some areas CBH Group a co operative company was established by grain growers in Western Australia in 1933 GrainCorp was established by the government of New South Wales in 1917 as Government Grain Elevator and was privatized in 1992 Canada Edit All companies operating elevators in Canada are licensed by the Canadian Grain Commission 8 Agricore United was taken over by Saskatchewan Wheat Pool in 2007 Alberta Farmers Co operative Elevator Company merged into United Grain Growers in 1917 Alberta Pacific Grain Company was taken over by Federal Grain Co in 1967 9 Alberta Wheat Pool merged with Manitoba Pool Elevators in 1997 Cargill was established in 1865 by W W Cargill Federal Grain was sold to the three provincial wheat pools in 1972 Grain Growers Grain Company merged into United Grain Growers in 1917 Lake of the Woods Milling Company Manitoba Pool Elevators merged with Alberta Wheat Pool in 1997 Parrish amp Heimbecker was established in 1909 by the two families of William Parrish and Norman G Heimbecker Paterson Grain was established in 1908 as the N M Paterson Co Richardson International was established in 1857 by James Richardson it is also known as Richardson Pioneer Saskatchewan Co operative Elevator Company was taken over by the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool in 1926 Saskatchewan Wheat Pool took over Agricore United in 2007 to form Viterra United Grain Growers was taken over by Agricore United in 2001 Viterra was established after the take over of Agricore United by the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool Sweden Edit In Sweden the vast majority of grain elevators belong to the Lantmannen co operative movement owned by grain growing farmers United States Edit General Mills grain distribution facility detail Idaho Falls Idaho ADM Milling Cargill General Mills Monarch Engineering Co builder Montana Elevator Co Perdue Agribusiness Scoular Smithfield Grain Southern States Cooperative Tyson United Grain GrowersNotable grain elevators EditDuring the Battle of Stalingrad one particularly well defended Soviet strongpoint was known simply as the Grain Elevator and was strategically important to both sides This is a list of grain elevators that are either in the process of becoming heritage sites or museums or have been preserved for future generations Canada Edit Alberta Edit Home Grain Co wooden cribbed elevator at the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village in Alberta Alberta Wheat Pool elevator Ltd wooden cribbed elevator at the Scandia Eastern Irrigation District Museum in Scandia Alberta Acadia Valley Prairie Elevator Museum former Alberta Wheat Pool converted into a tea house and museum 10 Alberta Central Railroad Museum former Alberta Wheat Pool second oldest standing grain elevator in Alberta moved from Hobbema 11 Andrew former Alberta Wheat Pool restored into a museum Castor former Alberta Pacific restored into a museum 12 Big Valley Alberta Wheat Pool used as a museum complete with a train station and roundhouse 13 Edmonton Ritchie Mill former flour mill converted into restaurants law offices and condominiums 14 Ellis Bird Farm built in 1937 oldest standing seed elevator in Alberta Esther former Alberta Wheat Pool restored into a museum Haselwood Mill Alberta s oldest seed cleaning mill second on the site privately owned not protected operated from the 1930s to 1960s near Bittern Lake Alberta Heritage Acres Farm Museum restored United Grain Growers elevator moved from Brocket 15 Heritage Park Historical Village former Security Elevator Co Ltd moved from Shonts 16 Kinuso United Grain Growers with original UGG logo Leduc former Alberta Wheat Pool saved from demolition now a museum 17 Lougheed former Pioneer Elevator now part of the Iron Creek Museum Mayerthorpe 1966 Federal Grain Co now an interpretive center 18 Meeting Creek a refurbished Alberta Wheat Pool Pacific Grain elevator and CN train station 19 Nanton Canadian Grain Elevator Discovery Centre three elevators saved from demolition and preserved to educate visitors about the town s and Alberta s agricultural history 20 Radway Krause Milling Co restored into a museum 21 Raley oldest standing grain elevator on its original site in Alberta built in 1909 maintaining many of its original features Rowley United Grain Growers and Alberta Wheat Pool elevators saved from demolition by locals and now fully restored Scandia Scandia Eastern Irrigation District Museum 1920s Alberta Wheat Pool and stockyard now a museum South Peace Centennial Museum United Grain Growers moved from Albright 22 Spruce Grove Spruce Grove Grain Elevator Museum former Alberta Wheat Pool now a museum St Albert St Albert Grain Elevator Park 23 a 1906 Alberta Grain Co and 1929 Alberta Wheat Pool Elevators now restored as a historic park 24 Stettler a 1920 Parrish and Heimbecker grain elevator feed mill and coal shed last to stand in Alberta now protected and restored as a museum 25 Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village former Home Grain Co moved from Bellis 26 British Columbia Edit Creston former Alberta Wheat Pool 1936 and United Grain Growers 1937 elevators that still stand tall on the edge of the downtown core in the middle of the Creston Valley Dawson Creek restored and refurbished as a community art galleryManitoba Edit Inglis elevator row Inglis Manitoba Inglis Inglis elevator row last surviving elevator row in Manitoba with a total of four elevators Now designated and protected as a National Historic Site of Canada Niverville Western Canada s first grain elevator erected by William Hespeler in 1879 27 Plum Coulee grain elevator refurbished as a restaurant and meeting roomsOntario Edit Scugog Canada s oldest grain elevator and the second oldest in all of the Americas Stiver Mills one of a few surviving grain elevators in Ontario built 1916 and used until 1968 and now a farmers marketQuebec Edit Silo No 5 Montreal This grain elevator was completed in four stages from 1906 to 1959 and was abandoned in 1994 With the demolition of Silo No 1 and Silo No 2 Silo No 5 is now along with the Old Port s conveyor pier tower the last vestige of Old Montreal s 20th century harbour panorama 28 Saskatchewan Edit Edam former Saskatchewan Wheat Pool now a museum Gravelbourg Former Saskatchewan Wheat Pool saved from demolition and now a museum Indian Head experimental farm grain elevator refurbished as a Cafe coffee house Sukanen Ship Pioneer Village and Museum former Victoria McCabe moved from Mawer 29 Val Marie former Federal and 1967 Centennial Saskatchewan Wheat Pool now museums North Battleford Western Development Museum former Saskatchewan Wheat Pool moved from Keatley 30 Weyburn Inland Terminal first large farmer owned inland terminal in Canada constructed in 1975 located near Weyburn Wood Mountain former Saskatchewan Wheat Pool No 706 demolished April 22 2014South Africa Edit Port of Cape Town once the tallest building in Cape Town now restored to become the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art AfricaSwitzerland Edit Swissmill Tower in upper Limmat Valley in the Canton of Zurich 118 m 387 ft high rebuilt by April 2016 31 Swissmill Tower upper Limmat Valley in the Canton of Zurich United Kingdom Edit The Manchester Ship Canal grain elevator was completed in 1898 It had a capacity of 40 000 tons and its automatic conveying and spouting system could distribute grain into 226 bins 32 United States Edit Wheeler Elevator Buffalo Ranchway Feeds mill and elevator Fort Collins Colorado Circle B grain elevator Concordia Kansas Historic Cooperative Elevator a row of corrugated steel hopper bottom bins on the left and cribbed annex bins on the right Crowell Texas Baltimore Maryland Edit Baltimore and Ohio Locust Point Grain Terminal Elevator one of the largest grain terminal elevators to be constructed in the early 20th century with a capacity of 130 000 000 cubic metres 3 8 billion US bushels in Baltimore MarylandBuffalo New York Edit American Grain Complex built between 1905 and 1931 Cargill Pool Elevator previously named the Saskatchewan Cooperative Elevator was built in 1925 offered a total holding capacity of 74 000 cubic metres 2 1 million US bushels in 135 bins Cargill Superior elevator marked as Cargill S built between 1914 and 1925 Concrete Central Elevator Buffalo New York The largest transfer elevator in the world at the time of its completion in 1917 Connecting Terminal Clearly visible from across canalside and the Commercial Slip the structure is now used for boat storage General Mills Plant or The Frontier Elevator General Mills Buffalo factory is a large scale grain mill and cereal production facility most notably producing Gold Medal brand flour Wheaties Cheerios and other General Mills brand cereals Great Northern Elevator built in 1897 by the Great Northern Railroad currently being demolished Lake amp Rail Grain Elevator part of the elevator alley The Lake and Rail produces over 2 700 00 pounds of flour a day Marine A grain elevator also part of the elevator alley and across from the Lake amp Rail Grain Elevator The Standard Elevator named after the Standard Milling Company and built in 1926 Wheeler Elevator also known as the Agway GLF East Work House built in 1908 Wollenberg Grain and Seed Elevator wooden country style elevator formerly located in Buffalo New York destroyed by fire in October 2006Wassaic New York Edit Maxon Mills built in 1954 and remained in active use as a feed elevator until the 1980s The mill was placed on the New York State Register of Historic Places and restored in the early 2000s It is currently used as a contemporary art exhibition space by The Wassaic ProjectIllinois Edit Armour s Warehouse constructed in 1861 62 on the north bank of the Illinois Michigan Canal in Seneca IllinoisIowa Edit Bouton Iowa s grain elevator owned by Susan formerly Flanery amp Michael Chris Brelsford photo shoot location for the 40th Anniversary Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue 2004 Minnesota Edit Northwestern Consolidated Milling Company Elevator A also known as the Ceresota Building and The Million Bushel Elevator citation needed was a receiving and public grain elevator built by the Northwestern Consolidated Milling Company in 1908 in Minneapolis Minnesota Peavey Haglin Experimental Concrete Grain Elevator St Louis Park Minnesota built in 1899 1900 Saint Paul Municipal Grain Terminal in St Paul Minnesota on the NRHPNorth Dakota Edit North Dakota Mill and Elevator largest flour mill in the United States located in Grand Forks North DakotaOklahoma Edit Bricktown Oklahoma City Oklahoma is home to OKC Rocks a former grain elevator that has been turned into an indoor rock climbing facility located in Oklahoma City 33 Ingersoll Tile Elevator elevator constructed of hollow red clay tiles located in Ingersoll OklahomaPhiladelphia Pennsylvania Edit Reading Company Grain Elevator export elevator in Philadelphia converted into offices Reading Company Grain Elevator near Center City Philadelphia now converted into offices South Dakota Edit Zip Feed Tower tallest occupiable structure in South Dakota from its construction in 1956 1957 until its demolition in December 2005Virginia Edit Groh s Grain Elevator elevator located near the York River in Clay Bank Virginia The concrete elevator with 14 silos was built in 1950 at a cost of 150 000 equal to over 1 6 million in 2021 by Louis Groh and Son Inc 34 The waterfront property containing the long abandoned elevator is owned by a local physician who has installed a wind turbine atop the towering structure to generate electricity 35 Sewell s Point grain elevator export elevator built by the city of Norfolk in 1922 to help the port of Norfolk better compete with other East Coast ports by providing a publicly owned facility to store and load grain at reasonable rates It was sold to the Norfolk and Western railroad in 1929 and leased from N amp W by Continental grain in 1952 The elevator originally held 26 000 m3 750 000 US bu but was later expanded to 120 000 m3 3 500 000 US bu The elevator was taken over by Cargill in the late 1980s and abandoned around the turn of the 21st century The elevator was demolished by Norfolk Southern in 2008 36 Southern States silos a grain elevator in Richmond Virginia originally built in the 1940s by Cargill and currently leased by Perdue Farms is the tallest structure south of the James River in the city of Richmond The elevator was the site of the 3rd RVA Street Art Festival 37 38 Wisconsin Edit Chase Grain Elevator tile grain elevator built in 1922 Sun Prairie Wisconsin Placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010 It is the last remaining tile elevator in Wisconsin Wyoming Edit Sheridan Flouring Mills Inc an industrial complex in Sheridan WyomingElevator explosions EditSee also Dust explosion Given a large enough suspension of combustible flour or grain dust in the air a significant explosion can occur A historical example of the destructive power of grain explosions is the 1878 explosion of the Washburn A Mill in Minneapolis Minnesota which killed 18 leveled two nearby mills damaged many others and caused a destructive fire that gutted much of the nearby milling district The Washburn A mill was later rebuilt and continued to be used until 1965 Another example occurred in 1998 when the DeBruce grain elevator in Wichita Kansas exploded and killed seven people 39 A recent example is an explosion on October 29 2011 at the Bartlett Grain Company in Atchison Kansas The death toll was six people Two more men received severe burns but the remaining four were not hurt 40 Almost any finely divided organic substance becomes an explosive material when dispersed as an air suspension hence a very fine flour is dangerously explosive in air suspension This poses a significant risk when milling grain to produce flour so mills go to great lengths to remove sources of sparks These measures include carefully sifting the grain before it is milled or ground to remove stones which could strike sparks from the millstones and the use of magnets to remove metallic debris able to strike sparks The earliest recorded flour explosion took place in an Italian mill in 1785 but many have occurred since These two references give numbers of recorded flour and dust explosions in the United States in 1994 41 and 1997 42 In the ten year period up to and including 1997 there were 129 explosions Media Edit Charles Demuth My Egypt 1927 Canadian Prairie grain elevators were the subjects of the National Film Board of Canada documentaries Grain Elevator 43 and Death of a Skyline 44 During the sixth season of the History Channel series Ax Men one of the featured crews takes on the job of dismantling the Globe Elevator in Wisconsin This structure was the largest grain storage facility in the world when it was built in the 1880s See also Edit Agriculture portalSilo Grain entrapment Granary Dust explosion List of grain elevatorsReferences Edit a b c d Brown William J 2013 American Colossus The Grain Elevator 1843 to 1943 Colossal Books ISBN 978 0578012612 Descriptions of types of grain elevators licensed by the Canadian Grain Commission Grainscanada gc ca 2010 01 12 Archived from the original on 2013 11 20 Retrieved 2013 03 28 a b Testimony taken by Interstate Commerce Commission October 15 November 23 1906 in matter of relations of common carriers to the grain trade 59th Congress Senate Document 278 Washington Government Printing Office 1907 pp 28 34 35 Grain elevator explosion rocks Halifax CBC News 2003 08 08 Huffstutter P J Plume Karl 11 April 2017 Grains piled on runways parking lots fields amid global glut Reuters Retrieved 12 April 2017 Grain Elevator Conference Urban Design Project State University of New York at Buffalo Archived from the original on 4 March 2016 Retrieved 22 November 2013 Cook Michael Papciak Bryan 2010 Elevator Alley Furnace Press ISBN 9780977274260 licences Grainscanada gc ca 2002 05 05 Retrieved 2013 03 28 Vanishing Sentinels Vanishingsentinels blogspot com 2005 12 30 Retrieved 2013 03 28 Acadia Valley elevator 2009 08 16 Archived from the original on August 16 2009 Retrieved 2013 03 28 Alberta Central Railroad Museum Abcentralrailway com Retrieved 2013 03 28 Castor elevator Albertasource ca 2010 12 08 Retrieved 2013 03 28 Dean Tiegs Big Valley elevator Canadiannorthern ca Archived from the original on 2013 10 03 Retrieved 2013 03 28 Ritchie Mill Edmonton Rmlo com Retrieved 2013 03 28 Heritage Acres Heritage Acres Retrieved 2013 03 28 Calgary Heritage Park Heritagepark ca Retrieved 2013 03 28 Alberta Legacy Development Society Leduc Leducelevator com Retrieved 2013 03 28 Mayerthorpe elevator Mayerthorpe ca 2012 12 06 Archived from the original on 2016 04 04 Retrieved 2013 03 28 Meeting Creek elevator Canadiannorthern ca Retrieved 2013 03 28 Canadian Grain Elevator Discovery Center Nanton Nantonelevators com Retrieved 2013 03 28 Radway elevator Townlife com 2008 09 24 Archived from the original on 2016 12 24 Retrieved 2013 03 28 South Peace Centennial Museum Spcm ca Retrieved 2013 03 28 St Albert Grain Elevator Park Archived July 21 2009 at the Wayback Machine St Albert elevator Archived July 21 2009 at the Wayback Machine Stettler elevator Boomtowntrail com Archived from the original on 2012 03 01 Retrieved 2013 03 28 Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village Tapor ualberta ca Retrieved 2013 03 28 Cook Ramsay 2005 Dictionary of Canadian Biography De 1921 a 1930 Ramsay Cook Jean Hamelin ISBN 9780802090874 Retrieved 2013 03 28 Laure Emery 2013 Silo a grain no 5 Repertoire du patrimoine culturel du Quebec in French Retrieved 21 November 2020 Sukanen Ship Pioneer Village amp Museum Sukanenmuseum ca Archived from the original on 2013 02 18 Retrieved 2013 03 28 Archived copy Archived from the original on 2012 06 22 Retrieved 2012 04 09 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint archived copy as title link Florian Niedermann 2016 04 27 Der Swissmill Tower spaltet Zurich in German Limmattaler Zeitung Retrieved 2016 05 19 Otter Chris 2020 Diet for a large planet USA University of Chicago Press p 22 ISBN 978 0 226 69710 9 Climb Up OKC ClimbUpGym com Climb Up LLC GROH v COMMISSIONER 15 T C M 538 1956 etcm5381445 Leagle com 1956 05 03 Retrieved 2022 08 12 Clay Bank resident harnesses wind energy Gazette Journal From bust to boom Deserted Norfolk facility to be exploded RVA Street Art Festival headed to Manchester silos Retrieved 11 December 2016 Third RVA Street Art Festival brings flood of creativity to Manchester 19 April 2016 Retrieved 11 December 2016 June 8 1998 DeBruce Grain Elevator Explosion City of Wichita City of Wichita 1998 Archived from the original on February 12 2008 Retrieved 2007 06 22 Sutton Joe October 30 2011 3 killed 3 missing after Kansas grain elevator explosion CNN com A report of grain dust explosions that took place in 1994 PDF Archived from the original PDF on 2007 01 24 Retrieved 2007 06 23 A report of grain dust explosions that took place in 1997 PDF Archived from the original PDF on 2007 01 24 Retrieved 2007 06 23 Grain Elevator Documentary film National Film Board of Canada Retrieved 22 July 2010 Smith Bryan 2003 Death of a Skyline National Film Board of Canada Archived from the original on 2007 12 07 Retrieved 2009 03 19 External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Grain elevators Grain elevators in West Texas Complete Photographic Record of the Remaining Canadian Prairie Grain Elevators Vanishing Landmarks Photographs of standing and demolished Grain Elevators with information and maps Grain Elevators Buffalo s Lost Industry Buffalo Grain Elevators A bibliography by The Buffalo History Museum Bruce Selyem Grain Elevator Photographer Pixelgrain Mapping Transition in the Canadian Prairies Inside a Modern Grain Elevator Popular Science Monthly February 1930 p 45 Drawing of how 1930s grain elevator worked at sea ports Our Grandfathers Grain Elevators blog with specifications of reinforced concrete elevators Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Grain elevator amp oldid 1129455412, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

article

, read, download, free, free download, mp3, video, mp4, 3gp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, picture, music, song, movie, book, game, games.