Grain Elevators in Jewell

     Farmers met May 23, 1908 to organize a Farmers Elevator Company.   On May 30, 1908 the stockholders of the elevator Company met at he City Hall at 3 o'clock to pomplete the organization of the elevator and to elect these officers: President, O. J. Larson; Secretary, H. T. Wilson; Vice-President, Gilbert Knutson; Treasurer, E. W. Knutson; and Directors: Jo Baltz, A. C. Larson, Otto Schlafke, Fred Bockholtz, C. J. Sickenger, O. J. Larson, and Gilbert Knutson.

     The capital of the company was placed at $6,000.   Later on July 3, 1908 at a special meeting, a motion was made to pay to Western Elevotor Company $4,000 for Elevator cribs, office, and all fixtures thereto.   Motion carried.   July 11, 1908, C. E. Fenton was elected manager for the Elevator at $75.00 per month.   On July 13, a motion was made that there be an investigation of the elevaotr and coal sheds in tregard to repairing them.   Coal was bought from Western Elevator (soft coal) for $2.80 per ton.   65 tons of hard coal were bought at $8.40 per ton.

Published September 21, 1967:  Elevator To Hold Open House - After months of planning and work, the Jewell Co-op Elevator can justifiably be proud to announce that their new elevator is completed and ready for business!

     Manager Ron Dalbey and the Board of Directors will officially commemorate the event Sunday afternoon, September 24, with an open house celebration.   Ron and the directors will be on hand to greet the elevator's hundreds of patrons and friends, and give them an opportunity to inspect the new facilities.     Open house will be held between two and five o'clock, and Manager Dalbey invites everyone to attend.

Published September 28, 1967:  Open House Well Attended - With Mayor Wally Cooke and Board President Luther Lund sharing ribbon cutting duties, the Jewell Cooperative Elevator officially opened its new 325,000 bushel grain storage elevator at an open house held Sunday afternoon from 2 to 5pm.

     Some 400 people attended the open house during the afternoon, Dalbey said.   A feature of the open house was a ride to the top of the elevator, where visitors could look out over the countryside from the tallest structure for miles.

     Dalbey said the elevator structure includes the latest in grain storage design facilities.   "It's no longer merely a storage house," he said,  "but is a working house."   Two grain legs allow operators to shift grain as they choose.   Thuse grain from different bins can be blended for shipping and can be moved about if "hot spots" show up in the stored grain.   Grain drying equipment will handle as much as 24,000 bushels per day.

     The new elevator was erected on the site of the burn-out grain storage building, in the center of the co-op's complex of farm-related business buildings.   "It was eight months to the day when we took our first load of grain i the new facility," said Ron Dalbey, manager of the Jewell elevator.

     The first grain was brought to the elevator by Frank Baldus.   Floyd Olson, driving a truck for Elvin Risetter, was the first man to drive a truck of grain to the new facility.   Towns represented at the open house were George, Ellsworth, Randall, Ames, Des Moines, Webster City, Story City, Radcliffe, Kamrar, Manson, Stanhope, McCallsburg, Stratford, Moorland, Bondurant, Nevada, Slater, and DeKalb, Illinois.

     The comment was heard from the Bondurant group that they were in Jewell to view the new elevator as a result of having seen it on TV over channel 13 Friday evning on the 6 and 10pm news as a special.

     The (old) elevator caught fire last January 13 and construction started later on; so after eight months, the Co-op is back in business in a bigger, better way.

     April 1, 1975 marked the official beginning ot the newly form Central Iowa Cooperative of Jewell and Stanhope, following approval of the merger in February by members of the Farmers Co-op Elevator of Stanhope and the Jewell Cooperative Elevator.

     October 5, 1979, Ron Amundson, manager of the Jewell-Stanhope elevators reportd that the Jewell elevator has a total capacity for storage of 1.6 million bushels and the Stanhope elevator has a capacity of 650,000 bushels.   He says that railroad service is not much better than it was a year ago with 31 hopper cars to go this week.   In addition, to keep the harvest from piling up, his operation has hauled a great many truck loads of grain at 15 to 20 cents cost over railroad cars to distibution and shipping centers.

     The Central Iowa Cooperative of Jewell and Stanhope highlighted its annual meeting March 12, 1981 by paying 40 per cent cash patronage dividends.   General manager Ronald Amundson termed 1980 a year of both success and progress, and also noted that savings were improved over the previous year.   He cited directors, emplyees and patrons as the reason for the success, and called for tea work to continue the bright future of the organization.

Sales totaled $16,271,957.00 and resulted in $395,189.00 net savings of which $294, 123.00 was represented in patronage dividends.   An impressive $117,649.00 was paid in cash.

(1981)

     The Central Iowa Cooperative was responsible for providing $328,095.00 in payroll income to emplyees at the Jewell and Stanhope locations, and also paid $54,229.00 in property taxes.   Grain was the big leader in total sales, representing $13,057,537.00.   Merchandise followed with $1,986,150.00, followed by petroleum with $728,775.99, and propane accounting for $449,495.00 of the total sales.