A wooden grain elevator at the railway siding of Newstead, five miles east of Souris along Highway No. 2, was built in 1936 by the McCabe Grain Company. Bought by United Grain Growers in 1968, the elevator was renovated and an annex was moved beside it from nearby Carroll. The facility was closed in June 1982 and removed from the site.
Photo: Agricore United Engineering Department
A wooden grain elevator at Gunton, south of Teulon in the Rural Municipality of Rockwood, was built in September 1951, replacing one destroyed by fire on July 24, 1951. This photo from 1964 shows it with the white colour scheme adopted by the company a few years earlier. Norman “Pinky” Herd was the agent from 1952 to retirement in 1980. The elevator closed in July 1984 and was removed.
Photo: Agricore United Engineering Department
A wooden grain elevator at Smith Spur (probably named for grain executive Sidney T. Smith) along highway No. 23 east of Lowe Farm, in the Rural Municipality of Morris, was operated by the Reliance Grain Company until 1948, when it was sold to Manitoba Pool Elevators. An annex was built in 1967. Closed in 1984, the annex was moved to Morris in 1989.
Photo: Julie Harris
Between 1881 and 1883, the Glenwood Roller Mills was built on the bank of Plum Creek in Souris by entrepreneurs George McCulloch and William Herriot. The facility included a grain elevator and annex in addition to the flour mill. The mill closed in 1921 due to the economic depression that followed the First World War. Purchased by the McCabe Grain Company in 1938, the firm constructed a new grain elevator in 1961. The facility was bought by United Grain Growers in March 1968. Closed around 1995, the old plant was demolished in June 1996.
Photo: Agricore United Engineering Department
In the 1950s, there were over 700 grain elevators in Manitoba. Today, there are fewer than 200. You can help to preserve the legacy of these disappearing “Prairie sentinels.”
The Manitoba Historical Society (MHS) is gathering information about all elevators that ever stood in Manitoba, regardless of their present status. Collaborating with the Manitoba Co-operator it is supplying these images of a grain elevators in hopes readers will be able to tell the society more about it, or any other elevator they know of.
MHS Gordon Goldsborough webmaster and Journal editor has developed a website to post your replies to a series of questions about elevators. The MHS is interested in all grain elevators that have served the farm community.
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Your contributions will help gather historical information such as present status of elevators, names of companies, owners and agents, rail lines, year elevators were built — and dates when they were torn down (if applicable).
There is room on the website to post personal recollections and stories related to grain elevators. The MHS presently also has only a partial list of all elevators that have been demolished. You can help by updating that list if you know of one not included on that list.
Your contributions are greatly appreciated and will help the MHS develop a comprehensive, searchable database to preserve the farm community’s collective knowledge of what was once a vast network of grain elevators across Manitoba.
Please contribute to This Old Grain Elevator website here.
You will receive a response, by email or phone call, confirming that your submission was received.
Goldsborough is especially interested in determining when elevators were demolished. Readers with photos of elevator demolitions and dates of when these occurred can contact him directly at [email protected] or call 204-782-8829.
