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Rescue squad by Acme Mine looking east, circa 1920s, Louisville Historical Museum <br />Architecture, Physical Description, and Functions of the Grain Elevator <br />The building has been the subject of three different architectural and historical surveys. These are <br />believed to have been funded and completed jointly by the City of Louisville and the State of Colorado in <br />1982, 1985, and 2000. In addition, information about this building is available from the 1986 National <br />Register listing and in the 2011 structural report by Anderson Hallas Architects that was commissioned <br />by the City of Louisville. <br />It is believed that the general, original purpose of a grain elevator in this area was to receive grain, <br />particularly wheat, from farmers. A farmer would bring a wagonload of grain to the elevator; interviews <br />of local residents indicate that the grains brought to the Louisville Elevator included wheat, corn, oats, <br />and barley. The Louisville Historical Museum has in its collection annual licenses given in the 1930s by <br />the state of Colorado to Donald Moore, operator of the Grain Elevator, to inspect and grade wheat, <br />barley, oats, corn, and rye. <br />The wagon would be weighed on the weigh scale, then emptied into a pit. Then the empty wagon would <br />be weighed again in order to obtain a true weight of the contents. The manager of the grain elevator <br />was responsible for this recordkeeping. Merwin Jay Harrison, whose father was manager of the Mullen - <br />owned grain elevator in Broomfield, Colorado, stated in a 1996 oral history interview for the Carnegie <br />Library for Local History that wheat would then be loaded onto boxcars and shipped to Denver, where, <br />he believed, it would be delivered to the Hungarian Flour Mill, which was also owned by J.K. Mullen. <br />Later, trucks rather than boxcars were used to transport the grain. <br />A grain elevator in this area would have also performed some processing of the grain, including <br />separating out gravel and weed seeds from the grain brought in by farmers, and grinding. <br />Local residents could purchase 100-Ib. sacks of flour directly from the Grain Elevator. These may have <br />been brought from flour mills in Denver, but precise information could not be located for this report. <br />Families in Louisville used the flour sacks from the Grain Elevator to make clothing. <br />Out of six possible types of materials used in the construction of grain elevators in the United States, the <br />Louisville Grain Elevator was constructed of wood. Also, as a wooden elevator, it is considered to be of <br />"cribbed" construction, meaning stacked lumber, as opposed to balloon frame construction. <br />6 <br />