Elevator Row Nanton Alberta

Elevator Row Nanton Alberta: two photos captured down by the tracks (or former tracks, present day) and separated by close to fifty years. The railway line through town is history, that little shack is long gone, but some of the grain elevators seen in the then photo have been preserved. Today they make up Canadian Grain Elevator Discovery Centre and are a wonderful museum you can tour.

The old photo comes courtesy of a friend, Henry Niznik (who also shot it) and dates back to the summer of 1972. You’re looking at a pastoral scene of a sleepy little backwater kind of place with nothing going on. This could be nearly any prairie town and peace like this something we long for.

The then image was captured on square format film (126 Instamatic) and too tall to use in the frame, so it’s been cropped to fit. Normally, we don’t change a thing in old photos, but here made an exception. The location of the now shot meant it had to be done sometime outside of summer or otherwise greenery would block the view.

We visited Nanton on a day with dreadfully harsh light, but liked how the subject lined up so we used our photo anyway. With reservations. There’s usually six or eight photos shot per session, from slightly varying angles and the best one used. This turned out to be the very first shot, interestingly. There we were, in the bitter cold, the wind howling, and with a stupid-giddy hi knowing we’re standing on the spot where Henry did half a century ago. A bit of mind blowing fun here.

Now photos are shot from the hip and most of the time dumb luck comes into play. There’s no science to it and while we do come prepared, mostly we just cross our fingers and shoot. Do it enough and surely one will be close. Still, the now photos won’t always line up exactly.

Then: looking south down the Canadian Pacific Railway’s MacLeod Subdivision branch. Built in the 1890s, the line lasted just over a hundred years and closed around the start of the present century. Most of the time it functioned as a typical grain branch and busy during harvest season or when commodity prices were high, but otherwise rather quiet.

The shed to the right is a bunk house and used as accommodations for train crews overnighting in town. If you want to know more, go here: Dunshalt Bunkhouse and here: Railway Bunkhouse. These ain’t no Palliser or Chateau Louise, but did the trick I guess.

Down at grain elevator row, we see eight buildings in total – the closest in is a set of twins and all other singles. One’s a seed cleaning plant and it’s that small one barely visible about mid-way in the row. A few elevators have a rail car parked out front. There’s a couple boxcars – the old way of doing it and common at the time – plus a single covered hopper of more modern design. That’s what they use today and they don’t load one at a time either and instead often fill a complete train in a single pass. The grain elevators of old and modern inland terminals really have little in common.

The first two elevators are connected to the Alberta Wheat Pool, and the buildings date from 1927 (the furthest twin in the T&N photo) and 1936 respectively. They were still in the old red-brown colours common to elevators up to the 1960s, and had yet to be repainted in the recently adopted Pool blue/green. The town’s name always got displayed on the side and helpful if you got lost.

A lone boxcar sits out front. It’s hard to fathom but boxcars were used to transport grain into 1980s and even bit beyond. They were labourious to fill and empty, but still they remained in use for an oddly long time. Hauling grain doesn’t pay well, so this helps explain their longevity.

Next up it’s a Pioneer elevator and it too wore different paint then compared to today. The building goes back to 1929 – one record suggests 1906, but that doesn’t seem to be corroborated with any other data – an earlier elevator perhaps? Anyway, it has an annex on the closest side and this a later addition to increase storage capacity.

The seed cleaning plant comes next and dates from 1959. It’s just out of view in our photo and this shows we were off by a hair in lining things up.

Further on there’s four additional grain elevators, all quite old at the time and now long gone. Nanton was a major grain shipping point at one time! In June, when Henry captured his image, things we’re rather quiet, but come fall, the tracks in Nanton could be full of rail cars.

Now: Four of the grain elevators seen in the then photo are still standing, the two Alberta Wheat Pools, the Pioneer and the little seed cleaning plant, so the first four. Interesting! All but the latter are part of the museum. A stretch of track and railway stock car were placed out front. Why not a grain box?

These three elevators closed around 2000 and roughly concurrent with the railway’s departure. The four elevators in the distance in the old photo were but a memory by this point.

Both the AWP and Pioneer elevators were modified (circa 1980s) and this allowed for the loading of two tracks worth of railcars. Otherwise, these building are little changed over time, even if wearing different paint.

The large pulley seen is part of he railcar winching system and they simply dragged the car or cars about using a cable. Grain elevator sidings were often built on a slight slope and the moving of cars also helped by gravity assist.

The Pioneer elevator still has its coal shed and these were a common fixture once. The material would be delivered in boxcars and shovelled into to the building via those doors for later sale. Many grain firms had a sideline coal business and in the old days rural folks used the stuff to heat homes. This business generally dried up by the 1960s with the wholesale switch to natural gas.

The Canadian Grain Elevator Discovery Centre opened in 2010, so close to ten years after these buildings last saw use. Good thing they acted when they did or perhaps their fate would have been something less positive. There’s less than a couple hundreds grain elevators left in the province, down from a high of seventeen hundred in the 1930s. A number have been rescued and incorporated into museums like this, a few are still used commercially or by farmers and a number simply abandoned. More are lost each year and the ranks thinning.

About ten years ago we did a more in-depth history on these CGEDC elevators, but that article bites (more than usual), so we won’t share the link here. Instead, we’re hoping to go back for a do-over and update everything with new photos. Stay tuned – hopefully. These elevators have recently been granted official historic status and this can help in terms of exposure and funding.

Henry has supplied us many snapshots he captured over the years to use as Then & Now fodder. Some have been published already and there’s more in the works. Here: Search Henry Niznik @ BIGDoer.com.

If you have an old photo you think would be a good candidate for this kind of treatment, please contact us. These have to be your copyright (family album stuff for example) and not pulled from the web. The best chances of success happen with ones that show a broad street or town scene like this one in Nanton and we can fill you more should we chat. We love doing them so help us out!

Know more: (new tabs): Canadian Grain Elevator Discover Centre and Nanton Alberta.

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A nice walkabout town…
Roaming Nanton.

Small Town Then & Nows…
Downtown Bawlf Alberta.
Main Street Slocan BC.
Rosedale Alberta then and now.

Something to say and no one to say it to? Go here: contact us!

Date of adventure: June 1972 and December 2021.
Location: Nanton, AB.
Article references and thanks: Henry Niznik (for the “Then” photo), Canadian Grain Elevator Discovery Centre and the book: Mosquito Creek roundup, Nanton-Parkland.

Elevator Row Nanton Alberta about fifty years apart.

Now the Canadian Grain Elevator Discovery Centre.

For the railcar winching system.

The old coal shed.

They’re a vanishing breed.