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The old Greely grain
elevator stands across the road from the Mercantile and beside the bed of
the former Great Northern Railway. Local farmers from both sides of the
Missouri River hauled their wheat, barley, and oats to the nearest point
along the rail where various companies provided facilities like the one
here. Loaded trucks pulled into the overhead doors, weighed in, dumped their
load through a special screen in the floor, and weighed again... The grain
elevator would lift the deposited grain up via conveyor belt, and dump it
into one of several tall bins. As the bins filled, the elevator manager
would procure a string of cars from the railroad to be parked along side the
main line in front of the elevator. A tractor or horses would position the
cars one at a time under a chute fed by the conveyor belt, which put the
grain into the waiting cars. From here, Montana wheat traveled to all parts
of the world. |