Like the classic old barns of rural America, classic grain silos and grain elevators of the USA’s agricultural vernacular are slowly disappearing. Photography can preserve these old relics of a simpler time.
Grain elevators, one of the most visible icons of rural and small-town life, are disappearing or are being forced to adapt to survive due to falling demand and increased competition.
The difference between silo and elevator is that silo is a vertical building, usually circular, used for the storage of grain while grain elevator is permanent construction with a built-in platform that is lifted vertically.
From old silos on family farms in New England to community grain elevators in Western Montana.
“A grain elevator is an agrarian facility complex designed to stockpile or store grain. In farming communities, each town had one or more small grain elevators that would serve the local growers. “
Grain elevators used to be in every Midwestern small town, a mainstay for the culmination of the harvest season in small farming communities.
Small grain elevators are becoming extinct as one farmer puts it “extinct”.
Today, grain elevators are a common sight in the grain-growing areas of the world, such as the North American prairies.
Coastal regions have their lighthouses. The flat American prairie of the Mid-West has its towering grain elevators.
Out-building seen frequently in the Vermont landscape is the silo. These tall structures stored the grain or silage (fermented corn stalks used to feed cattle during the winter months).
By the 1890s, free-standing silos were being constructed adjacent to dairy barns.
