Susank, KS: Tile and Slipform Elevators

Tile elevator: (gone)
Slipform elevator: (Satellite)

Linda Laird posted two photos with the comment:

Ceramic tile is a uniquely American building material. Its use flourished from the 1880s to 1910. The first tiles were made by hand. New York and Chicago firms mass-produced the building tiles by the 1870s, often supplying the materials and installations for skyscrapers. And for a brief time, tile was a standard material for first-class buildings.
Tile sounded great for building fireproof elevators built with double coursed rows of tile with steel bands inserted between the rows to give strength. They appear in elevators designs and ads right around the turn of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, the hard tile used was a poor insulator and the quality of tile production unreliable. Very few of these experimental elevators were built. Most have been town down. The elevator at Susank, KS was build by 1919 and demolished after 1995. There are some beautiful examples at Ingersoll and Cherokee OK that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

1
 It has been some time since I have been in Susank and I do not recall this one, but I remember a tile elevator back in the day at nearby Red Wing, Kansas just North of Cheyenne Bottoms

2

So 9x9 silos = 250,000 bushels

Bob Summers posted
The Ochs Brothers also had this elevator at Susank Kansas. This Chalmers & Borton slipform looks pretty much like when it was built in the '50's. The open overhead conveyor for a ground pile would have been an early addition, also in the '50's I believe. This 250,000 bushel elevator is a seasonal branch of the Great Bend Co-op as I recall.

Dennis DeBruler commented on Bob's post
According to Historic Aerials, those three rows of "dots" in this satellite images used to extend most of the way to the east end of today's ground pile area until at least 1992. And until at least 1981 those "dots" were tanks or bins. By 2002 they had removed some of the bottom row. The conveyor was installed between 2008 and 2010.
https://www.google.com/.../@38.63956,-98.../data=!3m1!1e3
Unfortunately, Historic Aerials slaps a copyright on the government images, so I can't include any aerial excerpts.
https://www.historicaerials.com/viewer