It’s been awhile since I worked on my grain elevator project in earnest. And that is despite the fact that I have moved to a state where I only have a handful of elevators photographed. A big part of that problem is the fact that I’m not terribly organized when it comes to progressing with the elevator project in Illinois. I’ve photographed the elevators that I know about and I’ve found a few others since I’ve been back. But there’s been no planning or real research about it. That kind of haphazard approach has left me feeling disconnected and not terribly productive.
Back when I really started working hard on this project in Colorado, I was blessed to find a couple of resources that really got me rolling. The first was a report on the grain elevators of Colorado’s eastern plains and front range by Kris Christensen. There was a listing of the extant elevators in Colorado that gave me a list of things to pursue. The second was the PBase site of Gary Rich. The latter was especially beneficial. I contacted Gary via PBase and found out that he lived about 40 minutes from me. He was a wealth of knowledge and invited me along for some journeys to photograph grain elevators and trains in Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska. Gary really knew what I liked in elevators and would always share places that he thought I would really enjoy. Sadly, he passed away last year. I really miss talking about these wonderful buildings with my grain elevator buddy.
Absent both of these sources of information, I decided that I really needed to start doing some research and setting up a game plan for Illinois’ elevators. I decided that creating a Google Map for myself that I could use to plan grain elevator outings and also pull up on the road when I’m traveling intrastate would be beneficial.
I started with the elevators I knew about. Many of these have been photographed before but I’d also like to have them on the map in case I’m out and nice light presents itself. Sometimes it’s good to have a map of potential locations when sunset approaches or storm light starts percolating.
After that, I started using the satellite view on Google Maps and following current and former railroads throughout the state. The wood elevators that I like to shoot the most were built in an era when shipping by rail was the best option, so they’re almost (I’d guess 95%+) always located along former or current railroad rights of way. This yielded some results but it was kind of a slow and time consuming process.
Eventually, I remembered that Bruce Selyem has a wonderful website dedicated to his elevator photography. Bruce is probably the most well known grain elevator photographer. He has a couple of books (both of which Amanda kindly bought for me and one is even signed) and my mom buys me his grain elevator calendar every Christmas. Bruce has photographed a lot of grain elevators! I’ve been going through his library of Illinois elevators and trying to find out which ones are still standing using Google’s satellite and street view imagery. Sadly, there are a lot of elevators in the Land of Lincoln that are no more. I’m glad that Bruce was able to photograph them before they were demolished.
As thorough as Bruce’s site is, there are still other elevators in the state that he hasn’t photographed. So I’ve been looking through Flickr and other photo sharing sites for photographs tagged with “grain elevator” and “Illinois.” This has yielded a few results and it’s at least been fun to see some of these elevators (again, I’ve encountered a numbers of elevators that are no longer standing, so I’m glad that there are photographic records of them out there).
It’s really starting to get me interested in this project again. It’s also helping me to define how to plan for another project I’m pursuing — documenting Illinois’ state parks. That’s a topic for another post, though. 😉