Durango's Graden Mill

Got a minute?

The Horse Gulch branch thread has been fascinating. My personal interest in Durango itself has been rekindled lately so that thread was fun.



Graden Mill 1966, Ron Morse photo, posted with permission

Can we talk about Graden Mill? I’m building a model and have been collecting photos from FOCTS Dorman collection and DPL and any other source I can find, got some real nice ones from Ron Morse. Have most of the pertinent books on Durango, RGS Story XI, the Dorman book, the two NG in Color books, and so on. Some nice Dell McCoy detail shots in one of the Trails/Columbine books. Have a half a dozen Sanborn maps which give great info, don’t have the valuation maps for Durango though. Have inquired to the LaPlata County Historical Society but have yet to find out what they may have. I should probably contact the Center for South West Studies as well. Have the Blazek drawing which is pretty good for the most part.

I plan to represent the late forties (maybe fifties) in my build and am trying to settle on signage. The Ranch-Way sign is cool and was used at other locations in Colorado as well, Monte Vista for one. I’m not sure when it first appeared though.


Graden Mill, date/photographer – not sure, RD004-062 used with permission FOCTSRR

My main question is where/how did product enter the building, and was it mainly by rail or truck? Was rail traffic mostly inbound or outbound? There’s a drive through open shed at the south end of the complex but that seems too far away from the “leg”, the elevator which brought product to the top of the structure for sorting into the appropriate bins. The sheds adjacent to the open drive through are labeled on the 1919 Sanborn map as “lumber, grain & flour whse” so I don’t think product was delivered to the leg through these sheds. Typically, elevators have a “boot”, a below ground level depository into which grain from boxcars was shoveled or dumped from trucks. From here the grain was moved to the leg (usually right next to the boot but not in Graden’s case) and raised to the bins. The leg at Graden is in the middle of the building so product would have to be moved from the edge of the building to the central leg, which replaced the original (I’m speculating) leg when the west bins were added increasing capacity from 30K to 75K bushels (per Sanborn). I’ve seen no photos which show a location for a boot trackside on the east side, but that would be hard to see anyway from the angle of most photos.

The two photos below were taken by Andy Payne a year apart - 1976-77, you can see what looks to be a cellar or basement where the elevator bins had been, where there may have been a conveyor to send product from a trackside boot to the leg, just guessing.


Views of Graden from the smelter hillside, 1976 and 77, Andy Payne photos from FOCTSRR, used with permission

Probably too much information, but infinitely fascinating to me. The wood cribbing bin construction is especially cool. There’s a neat little craft brewery in Wellington Colorado occupying an old elevator built this way.




Old Colorado Brewery, Wellington CO

I now know more than I ever imagined I’d know about grain elevators and flour mills, fascinating stuff. Any thoughts?

By the way, the Friend's Dorman, Payne, and Berkstresser collections are incredible, check 'em out.

Mike McKenzie
Frankfort IL



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/11/2017 05:46AM by bonefish.