Andale, KS: Kanza/Andale Co-op Grain Elevator

(Satellite)

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Bob Summers posted
The former Andale Co-op locations are now branch locations of the Kanza Co-op. This location at Andale Kansas offers another view of the additions over time, starting with their small early build slip form working house on the right, then an annex probably circa 1950. Then they built a larger working house which gave them both significantly more capacity, and just as important an additional place to unload trucks. Two more annexes were built to this facility, probably in the late '50's, making the total capacity here about a million and a half bushels. Also note the outside leg, which may have been added 25 or 30 years after the last annex was built in order to add another higher capacity receiving pit to handle the large tandems and even semi trucks used to deliver grain from the field to the elevator by the 1990's. Located on a former significant branch line of the Missouri Pacific this location is on the K & O. To explain the reason for the upgrades over time we need to look at the changes in farming over the same time period. A hundred years ago harvesting was done in multiple phases of cutting the wheat plants and stacking the cut plants, mostly by hand, then having a threshing crew and machine come to remove the grain from the straw. Early on, the grain was bagged in this step, but with the introduction of elevators to handle the grain in bulk, it would be delivered by horse drawn wagons. Early country elevators were the small wood, iron clad facilities we like to photograph today when we can find them. Because of limitations in transporting the grain to the elevator the railroads, in our area at least, would build rail sidings typically every 10 miles or so, and lease the ground and siding for building elevators operated by co-ops, independent elevator owners, mills and terminals needing linehouses to supply their larger elevators in the terminal markets. Then the major improvement in grain harvesting was the advent of the combine that cut and threshed the grain in one step. Originally pulled by horses or a tractor, combines eventually became self propelled. Over time, especially after WWII, farm methods and equipment enabled greater production, so the grain handling industry built larger more efficient facilities that did not need to be so close together. By the '60's and '70's the farmers were using larger combines requiring larger and larger trucks to deliver the grain to the elevator. So what we are seeing and photographing are the improvements at the elevators made over decades to serve their customers or patrons.