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They’ve been called ‘castles of the new world”, “prairie giants”, and “Gibraltar’s of the prairies”. For the last one hundred years prairie grain elevators have been a vital part of the western Canadian economy, landscape and culture. These wooden sentinels were a sign of progress and expansion and would eventually become a symbol of the prairie provinces. As farming methods became more mechanised and grain crops flourished, the county elevators served a valuable purpose for grain farmers as storage facilities for their bumper harvests. Soon every small town or hamlet built a grain elevator. Often that’s all a hamlet was: a general store, the grain agent’s house and of course one or two elevators. But just as progress brought the grain elevator to the Canadian prairies in the first place, progress has now decreed that these structures no longer serve a viable purpose. One after the other the prairie grain elevators are being torn down.
The first Canadian grain elevator was built in Manitoba in 1879 and was a round in design. Grain companies who’d already been experimenting with prototypes that would prove the most efficient and cost effective quickly realized that round was not the answer. The Canadian Pacific Railroad encouraged other private companies to design elevators to hurry along the process of grain movement. The rail company offered free sites and a monopoly for any prospective agents. By 1913 a standard elevator design was in use.
Each prairie elevator was built on a concrete foundation and stands 70-80 feet high with a gable at the top to accommodate the elevating machinery. Inside are 16 or 18 storage bins. The inner walls consist two-by-four boards, the outer walls are two-by-sixes spiked together to withstand the pressure as the bins are filled. Later design included metal strips or siding for added strength and weather resistance. The drive or scale shed resembles a lean-to and is situated on the opposite side of the tracks. There is a grated dumping pit, a weigh scale and large entrance and exit doors. Once a load of grain is dumped and graded the elevator (a rubberised belt with buckets) moves the grain to the top of the gable and spouts operated from below deposit the grain into the appropriate bins.
Most elevators were built no more than 8-10 miles apart to accommodate horse and wagon deliveries since it generally took producers a whole day to haul in a single wagonload of grain. Once rail cars were available the grain was moved out, mostly to shipyards for export around the world. Companies like Ogilvie Milling, Ellison Milling and Maple Leaf Milling, all still successful enterprises today, soon owned many of the rural elevators that were dotting the western prairies. Sometimes a group of farmers, or Farmers Unions as they were called then, bought into the system for more control. By 1916 there were more than 300 elevator companies in operation.
The early 1900’s also saw the number of acres under cultivation burgeon. Farmers were planting grain in record numbers. Two additional transcontinental railways went into operation to take advantage of this agricultural boom; the Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk Pacific rail lines. Ten years later over 2000 grain elevators had been erected in Manitoba, Saskachewan and Alberta. Total capacity of the structures was over 50 million bushels. 1938 saw the number of elevators in operation level out to approximately 5700. Elevator agents didn’t just handle grain for farmers. They also other commodities farmers needed like fertilizer, animal feeds, seeds of various kinds, baler twine, and even crop and car insurance. Often the local grain elevator was a central location for farmers and their families to meet and to socialise while waiting for their loads to be graded and dumped.
Because of grain handling changes, company mergers and streamlining, the Great Depression, alternate hauling methods, and centralisation of elevator services, elevators companies began shutting down the smaller, unprofitable branch lines. Currently there are less than 1000 operating elevators in the Canadian west. That number is falling almost daily as more are shut down to make way for structures of varying design called “super elevators”. Many long-time citizens of rural communities viewed these huge, expensive concrete behemoths as blotches on the prairie landscape. One of the first was the Buffalo Sloping Bin that was built in Magrath, Alberta, in 1980 at a cost of over $800,000. This vast structure resembles something that might belong in a modern 22nd century airport, not situated along the rail siding of a quiet little prairie town. But the locals eventually got used to it.
The success and cost effectiveness of the Magrath elevator and eventually more like it spelled doom for an increasing number of the old grain elevators. Over the last 15 years demolition of these colourful prairie sentinels has escalated. There have been instances where locals have actually become militant in their efforts to save the ageing structures. But as more of them fall into general and sometimes dangerous disrepair, elevator companies continue hiring demolition teams to bring the old elevators down. Usually the whole town gathers to witness the event and when the dust settles the odd tear is shed. Trucks haul away the splintered wood and within a matter of hours bulldozers have cleared away any remaining debris. A raw furrow in the earth is all that remains where the old wooden sentinel once stood, now just a memory of a once proud Canadian prairie tradition.
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