Grainnet

Written by Barb Selyem. Photos by Bruce Selyem

Diza Eskridge was the newly-elected commissioner of Platte County, MO, when the movie Truman was released in 1995. As commissioner, she was invited to attend the opening in Kansas City, MO and was surprised when the grain elevator her family had owned from the mid-1930s to 1993 appeared on the screen in the first few minutes of the movie.

It had been built for flour milling and had been used as a feed mill in later years. But Diza never imagined it would be part of a movie scene.

Early History and Use In 1914, Julius Rumpel and B.J. Bless built this elevator in Weston, MO, on ground that was once part of the channel of the Missouri River.

During the flood of 1881, the river changed its course to flow one mile west of Weston, on the Kansas side of the border.

The elevator’s support timbers and framed walls are walnut. The exterior is clad with metal siding.

It is 30-feet-x-30-feet in area and 57 feet tall and has 10 storage bins that hold a combined 24,000 bushels of grain. The elevator has survived 93 years of use and many floods.

At first it was called the R&B Elevator and was part of a flour milling business that continued through the 1920s as the Farmers Cooperative Elevator Association.

Then when Ben Layton, Diza’s great uncle, bought it in the 1930s, he renamed it the Weston Elevator Company and began manufacturing feed.

After World War II, Layton hired Raymond Pepper, his nephew and Diza’s father, to manage and do bookkeeping. Subsequently, Layton sold the elevator to Pepper in 1957. At that time, Diza was in high school.

For the next few summers continuing through her college years, Diza worked part time at the elevator weighing trucks and taking samples. She learned nothing about feeding animals.

She graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1964 with a degree in business. During her early career, she worked in retail, insurance, and as a teacher.

From Fashion to Feed Diza never considered a career in manufacturing feed.

“When Dad got sick in 1980, I started managing the elevator. I figured if I could sell women’s fashions, I could sell pig feed,” Diza says.

“At first, customers, who were mostly men, were apprehensive about dealing with a woman. But gradually, I won their confidence. One customer who was particularly skeptical told me later, ‘You’re doing a good job; I’m pleasantly surprised.’

“I was definitely a rookie, but I had two employees who, along with my dad, taught me the business: Lois Firman, who kept the books and raised cattle, and Otto Scholz, who manufactured and delivered our feed. The company could not have survived without them.”

Weston Elevator Co. was a feed mill and farm supply business. It manufactured bulk feed for all kinds of animals and sold seed, fertilizer, chemicals, baling twine, even supplies for tobacco farmers. It was a Purina dealer for 55 years.

In the early 1980s, the company was still merchandising grain, but this was becoming much less profitable as Kansas City and St. Joseph, MO, with much larger grain elevators, sprawled towards Weston.

Diza stopped selling grain commercially but still used the elevator for storing local corn and oats for the company’s feeds.

When she sold the company to Brian Cogan in 1993, it was the only bulk feed service in Platte County.

Diza’s elevator years were not without their challenges. “Flooding was an ongoing problem,” Diza says. “Our sump pumps ran continuously, as there were active springs right under the elevator.

“Also, though the Missouri River was a mile away, when it flooded, it backed up into Brills and Bear creeks close to the elevator. When this happened, we moved the grain to higher bins in the elevator and the motors out of the basement. We could never prepare for flash floods.”

Same Building, New Business The great flood of 1993 forced Brian Cogan to close the elevator for good. He sold it and a smaller elevator on the property to two investors, Daniel McCaffrey and Steve Frey of McCaffrey Frey Realty.

These men had hoped to renovate both facilities for shops and restaurants. There were two floods during the four years they owned the elevators, from 1996 to 2000. With the floods, plus other commitments, they never found time for the renovations. They sold out to Benjamin Kent and John Miller, who had the same concept.

Kent and Miller did restore the west elevator but planned to tear down the 1914 R&B Elevator. Luckily, they never went through with it. When Mel Beverlin saw the buildings advertised for sale, he bought them for Beverlin’s Statuary in the spring of 2006.

“It’s perfect for our business—concrete yard ornaments aren’t affected much by flooding,” Beverlin says.

“The location is ideal, and the surroundings are beautiful. We have our office/store in the red, renovated building. We aren’t using the silver elevator right now, but I love old buildings and eventually hope to restore it for a museum.”

Barbara and Bruce Selyem are directors of the Country Grain Elevator Historical Society. For more information, contact the society at 406-388-9282; e-mail: bselyem@country-grain-elevator-historical-society.org.

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