Restored 1913 Grain Elevator

www.prairiefarmreport.com
Air Date: November 9th, 2013
Location: Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada
Features: The Sukanen Museum near Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and the restoration of a 1913 wooden prairie grain elevator. According to organizer, Doug Carrick they had to move the elevator about 100 miles from its original location at Mawer, Saskatchewan. They then got the elevator functioning as like it used to, including the 10 horsepower Fairbanks Morse single piston engine that was used to drive the elevator leg. The museum and its volunteers sunk about $100k into the restoration project.

[@waveranger4974]

I loved watching this. God Bless these fine folks

[@bearbon2]

How refreshing to see this elevator saved instead of demolished like so many others. Unfortunately the people who value this history are diminishing in number.

[@popps2502]

Why do I have to look at that Mutant Mutt. Not every body is a Narcissistic dog lover.

[@specialestness]

These old elevators just aren’t as good. The only things they’re good for is the blast from the past.

[@XSB-en5bg]

I Rember as a kid going with my grandmother to Marty Brothers CO -OP in Bagley MN an bringing grain in back of the pick-up. What you all did an are doing is great!! Thank you for showing!!

[@whatever_it_takes6691]

So you have a person working inside on a computer doing paperwork and another worker outside doing the loading/unloading?

[@daveborchers5649]

Worked in an old elevator like that in the late eighties. All the bins were 8 by 8, 2 wood legs and put together with square nails.

[@lol-ti6rq]

This is the best documentary or news channel I have discovered

[@SomeTechGuy666]

We used to haul to an elevator just like that until the late 1980s. They used that front wheel lift on big single axle grain trucks, like a Chev C65.

[@romanstar7550]

quit watchin tv long ago and have always missed pfr , great seein these vids here

[@ecr125x]

roman soldier this was a tv show at one time? I'd watch a 1/2 hour or hour long show of PFR

[@strawberryroan1941]

ecr125x yes it is a show that has been on since the 1980s all the way till now and is still on to this day! My dad remembers watching it when it first came out and when i was growing up i watched it every Sunday when it was on. Actually my neighbour and long time friend was on it in the 1990s i think a she was on it to talk about what it was like to be a woman farmer. She sadly passed away in 2005 but our community continues to carry on her name. Around the time when she was just getting sick she was having trouble finishing combining so my dad reached out and organized getting a bunch of our friends and neighbours to help her combine, by the time everyone showed up there were about 11 combines helping out. I do not know how much you care but that is a little story that I always found interesting when i was a little kid :)

[@skyt54]

Really cool video. I have a restored Ruston and Hornsby engine that used to run one of these elevators.

[@uthermaceanruig5098]

Great video! It takes me back to when I was a young man working at Agway in Dansville, NY.

[@765kvline]

Extremely interesting. I remember these wooden ones well, one particularly, in Geddes, South Dakota. It replaced the original pre-1912 one, which was the site of a multiple murder and subsequent arson, to cover up the crime. It is still there, but beside the "new" elevator (wooden) is the "newest" one which was built in the '70s. Lots of history with these old buildings. I also remember one in the Ghost Town of Bovee, back in the '60s, straddling the old Milwaukee Road tracks--all gone today. Good program; well produced.

[@jfxcanadajeffchannel]

Very nice! Thanks for creating these videos to share with everyone.

[@oilersridersbluejays]

They had these elevators in my grandpa's time. Then came out with bigger wood ones in my dad's time. My time was a lot of steel elevators alongside the first two kinds or steel that used the old wood ones as annexes. Now, a few are around but most are gone and all closed except for a few producer car loading sites. Now, it's just a few isolated concrete terminals on the main lines now. All the branch lines are tore up. Kind of went backwards in a way. Used to haul our grain six miles into town with our old three ton or tandem axle grain truck. Hang out and have coffee (or a beer) in the elevator office and socialize. Now, hire out super-b's and they take it an hour (or more) to distant terminals. Just dump and drive away.

[@stevenwright1063]

Very impressed with commentary and video basis. . . best new channel I have found

[@Sea-Bass]

These are great to see restored, but the elevator I worked at still used one of these until 3 years ago we finally took it down. How none of us ever got hurt was nothing short of a miracle.

[@davesendit1348]

Wow, incredible. Thanks for this great video

[@icelineman]

I used to go to an one just like thus. with my dad when I was little it was torn down in 1999

[@markdanielczyk944]

Very cool! Beautiful restoration/preservation.

[@victorabbs8637]

So thankful for people like you thank you for saving history

[@butchhuebsch3445]

My Grandfather ran the Loomis SD elevator in the early 70s. Amazing engineering. Miss the smells.

[@MohammadRauf1]

very cool! A bit of history for us. Have to make it down there and visit one day.

[@neilchapman6539]

Very cool I still run a wood elevator in Nebraska

[@jimanderson7648]

not very many wood elevators up and running in the Canadian Prairies and US plains any more. Is there many your area other than the one you're running?

[@prairiedog7720]

very nice! we half to preserve as many of these prairie treasures as we can I would totally volunteer to help restore one!

[@pmonkeygeezer6212]

prairie dog Demolish these eyesore elevators. Smash them down or burn them to the ground!

[@gaugebrady5416]

Same but if they are real bad just destroy them if you can save them save them

[@PreservationEnthusiast]

@@gaugebrady5416 Interesting original comment. Why do we "have to preserve as many as we can". Surely a couple of examples are enough. If we try to preserve all of the past, the present becomes clogged with stuff which is of no use.

[@jamesparker1063]

@@PreservationEnthusiast I really don't see how innocent grain elevators, no matter how many (and there are not many left), could possibly "clog" the present day! Do you think this same attitude prevails, re such as "obsolete" structures, such as lighthouses and windmills? No, the people who live by those, seek to preserve them, as a part of their history, which they are not willing to jettison/abandon; why should it be different with the elevators?

[@PreservationEnthusiast]

@@jamesparker1063 I think you have taken my comment out of context. I said if we try and preserve all of the past, the present day becomes clogged with stuff. This is totally accurate. What if we preserved all the automobiles that were ever made? We would be swimming in piles of scrap! These elevators are not "innocent". That's needless personification. Neither are they "prairie treasures". That's romanticizing what amounts to eyesores on the landscape. Who is going to pay to maintain these rotting legacies? No, I stand by the comment that "preserving as many as we can" is ridiculous. Luckily, they are fairly easy to bring down. An hours work attacking the base with an excavator or a few well placed wads of newspaper and some matches will sure bring these blots on the scenery crashing down.

[@tyfrank3427]

This is all about the real Canada. Contrary to popular belief, there's life beyond the city, and living that life a little bit will change how you view the world

[@strawberryroan1941]

Ty Frank you are so right! Growing up on a farm my whole life it kind of angers me when you here people talk about the big city's and whatnot but like you said there is a so much more to our country than that stuff. And i think people who are afraid of farming and think bad of it should go out and live and work on a farm for a while and they would end up staying because they would like it so much! When i work with my dad to raise and farm cattle and to farm grain, i feel some sort of special feeling that i am doing my part to help feed the world :)

[@PreservationEnthusiast]

@@strawberryroan1941 Me and me mates used to bust up these old elevators. It didn't matter because the next months excavators came in to demolish them!

[@mikecarlson6416]

impressive work

[@7viewerlogic670]

Great story!

[@tomp8871]

Glad to see this.

[@schmidfarms1702]

Awesome!

[@lol-ti6rq]

This is real news

[@michaeldrevdahl2292]

I remember the shoots from joel wi it was about the same style its great were are you at ?

[@Rurik8118]

4:40 - Speaking of engines, the sound of mechanical progress as a Harvard II rips overhead ! ✈️ A great video below from the 80’s showcasing a POOL elevator during operation : kzbin.info/www/bejne/jHjUi6FrqMSklbs

[@bennybean4500]

My grandpa worked on one of these in Kentucky.

[@patrickdunfee-gx4ew]

I was 24 looking for a job in Sandpoint Idaho the guy that hired me only hired me because I was the same weight as him . I didn't understand till I had to pull someone up that was not the same weight

[@rawbacon]

Old guys are probably dead now.