Annawan, IL: Rock Island Depot and Grain Elevators

(Satellite, depot and grain elevators no longer exist)

These photos are another example that grain elevators were almost as important to a railroad town as the depot.

Raymond Storey posted two photos with the comment: "ANNAWAN ILL."

1
[The town used to have at least two grain elevators.]

2

Andy posted better resolution and exposure of the first photo above. And provides a photo credit.

Andy Zukowski posted
Rock Island Railroad Depot in Annawan, Illinois, circa 1910, photographed by C.R. Childs.

Erik Rasmussen: The group of men on the right are working on the switch! Note the jack at the switch point and how they’re gathered at the switch stand.

Sam Bailey: Erik Rasmussen Changing a switch tie. Evident where ground broken on opposite side and those 4 men are pulling it toward them.

Richard Fiedler shared

Steven Hooker shared

Pinterest
[Once again, people were skinny back then. Note the ramp on the left of the grain elevator. Rather than dig a dump pit, they built a ramp so that the wagons would go above the ground to dump into the leg. Digging pits before backhoes were developed would have been a pain. Although building that ramp could not have been easy either. I think the semaphores at the depot are for train orders.]

I tried to extract comparable areas from the old aerial and the new satellite to determine if this town grew or shrunk. It lost an industry that was on the northwest side of town, but it has grown. I'm sure it helped that I-80 passed close by. There no longer appears to be a grain elevator in this town.

1938 Aerial Photo from ILHAP

Satellite

I'm putting the date of the photos in the early 1900s because of the length of the dress and the smallness of the locomotive and train. It appears the grain elevators were gone by 1938 because I don't see any buildings south of the tracks with long shadows. Did the grain business move to the Hennepin Canal that is just north of town? I believe the depot is the building just west of Canal Street on the north side of the tracks. But I don't understand why the dormer for the bay window is on the side away from the tracks.

1938 Aerial Photo from ILHAP