Sunday, May 9, 2010

Which grain elevator is this?


Neither Orrin nor I can remember where he took this photograph, which shows a chart -- scrawled by hand upon a wall made of reinforced concrete -- that records the names of the boats that were unloaded (and the amounts of grain they were carrying) in 1980.

The fact that the year is 1980 suggests that he took the photo in the Great Northern Elevator, which ceased operations in 1981 and which we were given a tour of in 1992. But there are no reinforced-concrete walls in the Great Northern. Furthermore, we have no other pictures of this elevator, which suggests we didn't take any photos of it during that tour.

The photo could have been taken in the Superior Elevator, the Wheeler (aka the Agway/GLF), the Concrete Central, or the Standard Elevator, all of which have walls made of reinforced concrete. But the Superior Elevator ceased operations in the 1960s, and the Concrete Central and the Agway/GLF closed down in mid-1970s. As for the Standard Elevator, it remained in operation until the 1990s, if not later, and so wouldn't have though the year 1980 to be worthy of such notoriety.

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