Day 4 -- 16 April 2017

We got on the road at 8:45. It’s cool today — almost cold — and overcast, as a cold front blew through last night. The wind’s up again, too. We topped up the tank and headed east again, backtracking to Wilson to pick up a couple more elevators. Our first elevator (#30) was one we spied last night on the way to the hotel, on Toulon Road, east of Hays. We came back today to shoot it. It turned out to be a tiny elevator on private property, so we couldn’t get close to photograph it.

Another was spotted from the highway, this one in Gorham (#31). It was perhaps the largest wooden elevator we’ve seen on this trip and obviously still in use. It is a solid, well-maintained structure.

Heading into Russell on old Hwy. 40 we passed the remains of the Sky-Vu Drive-in Theatre.

And here is yet another elevator seen from I-70, this time in Bunker Hill (#32). It’s another in good trim, still in use.

Wilson, Kansas, proved to be a gold mine, with no fewer than five old wooden grain elevators, some massive, all derelict. One (#33) was off by itself.

The other four (#34-37) were in a cluster of elevators and large, round silos. All were in a fairly advanced state of decay.

Wilson, as a town, was pretty interesting. It calls itself the Czech capitol of Kansas and, in a park near the town center, is a massive Czech egg, perhaps 20’ tall, under a gazebo.

A block away is an interesting war memorial, surrounded by a fence topped with rock-drill bits.

We were treated again today with more amazing and interesting cloud formations while driving along Interstate 70.

Here's a meadowlark, State Bird of Kansas, on a fence post. The post, strangely,  is made of Kansas limestone known as post rock. Post-rock fences can be seen almost anywhere in the area we were in.

In Victoria we found another very large elevator (#38) and a lot of large silos. These larger elevators are all on the railroad’s mainline. This one is still in service.

It started raining lightly as we made it back into Hays, on our way to Ellis, which we expected to be our last stop. When we got there, we couldn’t find the anticipated grain elevator, which was disappointing. However, we did find a park train in the city park next to the downtown area. The engine was made by Ottaway Amusement Company of Wichita, Kansas.

We started back to Denver on I-70 at 80 mph, through the rain.

It had stopped raining by the time we got to Colby, where we found a small, but tall, out-of-service elevator (#39) that someone was evidently using for a garage.

We left the Interstate at Colby and went north to Hwy. 36. In McDonald, Kansas, we found a lovely, big elevator (#40), evidently still in service, although the adjacent track was not serviceable any more.

Also in McDonald we found a second (#41), this also a large one, still in service.

We couldn’t believe our eyes when we got to Bird City. There we found five wooden grain elevators (#42-46), all part of a single massive complex. Bonus!

And finally, in Wheeler, Kansas, we stumbled on three more (#47-49), which Vance called Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear.

So ended our quest — over 1,500 miles in four days to see an amazing 49 wooden grain elevators in (mostly) one corner of Kansas. This was a great experience and we were more successful in our venture than either of us had expected to be.

I have to extend my sincere thanks to Vance, who planned our itinerary almost single-handedly. Some of the elevators we visited he had seen before on trips to Kansas. The majority, however, he found by mining Google Earth. He would first find the rail line (since most grain elevators were located next to the track), then scroll along the track, looking for promising things, often being tipped off by the distinctive shadows the elevators cast. He would then go to “street view” to confirm the find.

The fact that Google’s images might be years old accounted for the time or two that we arrived to find nothing in the spot where once grew a grain elevator. This was just another reminder that maybe we were doing a good thing by documenting some of these buildings, even in a small way.