The Pinola elevator, circa 1967. (dunelady.com)
By Fern Eddy Schultz, LaPorte County Historian
Today, County Road 500 West (formerly known as the Pinola Road) is heavily traveled between Johnson Road and Ind. 2. Probably many of you who frequent this road have no idea about the history of this tiny burg and what put it on the map — the Pinola elevator.
LaPorte County Historian Fern Eddy Schultz
Charles H. Johnston and his two sons, Guy and Walter H., came to Pinola about 1904 and built up a grain-buying business. The first grain elevator burned to the ground in 1912 or 1913 from an undetermined origin. It was rebuilt, and in 1916 the Johnstons built a flour mill alongside the grain elevator to produce flour of their brands, which gained a reputation in the immediate vicinity.
Charles Johnston saw an opportunity where customers would not feel they had to travel northwest to get good flour. He believed that good flour, if not better flour than that made in Minnesota, could be made in Pinola. A new heating plant was installed to allow proper ripening. Their spring wheat brand of flour was called Fancy Blue Stem and the winter wheat brand was the Purity.
For deliveries of flour to nearby towns, Mr. Johnston ordered a motor truck. The new mill made it possible for farmers to take their own wheat there and have it ground, securing flour from the same wheat they brought. At this time in the history of the elevator, about 100,000 bushels of grain were shipped each year from the elevator.
When Mr. Johnston died, the elevator was sold to the Pinola Cooperative Company, which was organized as a farmers’ co-operative on March 18, 1920, with Jess Dolman being the first manager. Clemens Levendoski was employed in 1922 and became manager in 1925.
During World War II, because the Federal Government required a change in milling that would have necessitated a considerable investment and because flour sales and profit margins were low, the milling of flour was discontinued at Pinola. For a time, coal was an important commodity at the elevator and there was a period when mule teams, hitched to wagons, were sent from the Indiana State Prison Farm at the Summit to haul coal to the farm. Coal used to be dropped from trains for local inhabitants and there was a water tank for supplying steam engines.
The elevator company quit shipping grain by rail when truck companies started underbidding railroads. Four or five railroad cars had to be filled to make rail transportation profitable. All of the elevator’s grain was driven to Chicago elevators such as Cargill.
The elevator company was incorporated in November 1956 and between that date and the middle 1970s, the company grew in size. It met the “full service” needs of area farmers who had come to depend on the Pinola elevator. Galen Engle took over as manager upon the retirement of Levendoski in 1963 and remained until he resigned in April 1974 because of ill health. Charles Wesson was appointed manager when Engle left and Bruce Kramer became manager in April 1976, remaining until it closed. A metal storage bin and corn dryer were purchased in 1976 and a new chemical-fertilizer spray in 1978.
It was in 1988 that the Pinola Elevator Company Inc. began liquidating its assets as it no longer had the financial base to stay profitable all year long. The operation was shut down in December of that year. At that time the elevator was the smallest of about a dozen in the county.
The building was sold off piece by piece during an auction at the elevator site in March 1990, purchased by Gene O’Connor. He was in the process of renovating it for storage space when a fire, believed to have been deliberately started, struck the evening of Sunday, June 28, 1992. O’Connor said the elevator could not be saved but did not rule out the possibility of rebuilding at the site. This, however, did not happen.
The next time you pass through Pinola on the shortcut of CR 500 West, look to the west just across the railroad tracks from the Pinola Saloon; that is the historical site of the Pinola elevator.
FERN EDDY SCHULTZ is official Historian of LaPorte County. For more information on the county and its fascinating history, visit the LaPorte County Historical Society Museum and its website, www.laportecountyhistory.org.