Red, wood-sided grain elevator at Accola, MT, where Dry Creek Road meets Biggs-Haugland Road north of Belgrade, MT. Between 1914, when it was built, and 1978, when rail service stopped, it shipped wheat, mostly a variety called “Turkey Red,” by boxcar to flour mills in the Gallatin Valley. The Montana Elevator Co. built the 19,200-bushel crib elevator next to the Gallatin Valley Railroad that had just been completed from Belgrade to Menard, MT. It was part of a network of elevators the company needed to provide wheat for its sister company Montana Flour Mills Inc. In 1919, the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railway purchased the Gallatin Valley Railroad, and Montana Flour Mills Inc. bought the Story Mill in Bozeman, MT. For 50 years, the Milwaukee delivered wheat to the mill on the “Turkey Red Special.” Ray Haugland, an area farmer, bought the Accola elevator in the late 1960s, about the same time as Montana Flour Mills sold out to Nebraska Consolidated (ConAgra). In 1983, Haugland sold the elevator to Ralph & Prudence Biggs, who owned all the property that surrounded it. (Haugland had bought the elevator property from the railroad in 1978.) Biggs Ranch used it for storage for only three or four years, and the elevator has been idled since. 7/09/2008 Written by Barb Selyem http://www.grainnet.com/articles/Old_Time_Elevator_____May_June_2008-60091.html

Old car and furnace at Elkhorn Ghost Town, Montana.

Old home on ranchland in northern Gallatin County, Montana.