Grain Elevator - Sleepy Eye, MN

from flickr user Tom McLaughlin
Grain elevators like this one in Sleepy Eye, MN are a dying breed. No longer do their overhead storage bins constructed from lumber laid on its wide dimension hold enough grain to be viable. Instead, modern grain elevators consist of a row of steel grain bins of towering concrete silos connected by ultra-fast grain legs which allow farmers to unload a semi truck full of corn or soybeans in a couple minutes. These older structures are often times demolished as large cooperatives swoop in and expand with modern facilities to stay competitive and provide faster service to today's large-scale farmers. If you ever get a chance to see the inner workings of a grain elevator like the one in this photo, do it because the interior is amazing -- especially when you consider that many of these structures are nearly 100 years old.

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