Reprinted from GRAIN JOURNAL May/June 2020
by Barbara Krupp-Selyem
There is a yellow sign with black lettering rusting in the weeds next to the metal-sided frame elevator at Dickens, NE. The sign says “Dickens Grain & Feed.” There is no rail siding sign, no town sign, and no sign of life other than a snake that slithers over the rocks between the tracks.
The only sound is from loose metal siding flapping when the wind happens to catch it at just the right angle. Where the metal is missing, the original red wood siding is exposed. And where it has been missing for a long time, the red paint has worn away, exposing bare wood. A wash bucket is attached to the end of the rail spout. It has no bottom, only a jagged edge worn thin by grain. There is no shed door on the west side, and the earthen approach is badly eroded. The wood drive floor and the wagon dump are well-worn from the teams of horses with wagons, tractors with wagons, cars, pickups, and grain trucks that have hauled grain here for more than 100 years.
An Early Business
Dickens, NE was founded in 1889, one year after the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad arrived. It is thought that the Dickens elevator probably was built between 1890 and 1900. In 1920, at the town’s peak, there were 250 people here, and businesses included a school, two groceries, a lumberyard, a bank, a feed store, a drug store, a hardware store, and the grain elevator.
By the 1950s, prosperity was becoming a memory. The old depot was torn down in 1951 but not the 60-year-old elevator. In 1957, a disastrous fire burned several businesses, but the elevator escaped damage. The school closed, and stores were torn down in the 1960s, but the elevator continued in use. In 1989, the town’s centennial year, there were 20 people left in Dickens, a post office, and the grain elevator. Now, though Dickens still appears on Nebraska maps, few people live in the area, and the elevator is the only thing standing that designates where the town of Dickens had been.
George VanAckeran, whose company was called Dickens Lumber and Grain, was the last one to use the elevator as part of a commercial grain business in the1940s. Vern Harris and his childhood friend, Pat Aylward (both now in their 80s), bought the elevator in 1980 from another farmer, Bob Cohen.
Remembering Prosperity
According to Aylward, “Dickens was a prosperous town in the horse-and-wagon days, drawing a lot of grain business from Hayes County, which is south of Lincoln County. My dad told me they used to leave with teams and wagons early in the morning so they could get their horses in the livery stable while they ate dinner.”
The Dickens elevator has not been used since the early 1990s. Harris says, “The 12,000-bushel elevator was too small and too slow. The wood leg could only handle about 1,200 bushels per hour, while our combines could harvest twice that amount per hour. The chutes were worn, and the elevator would have cost too much to fix. We quit paying taxes and the railroad lease in 1999.”
The procedure for collecting back taxes in Lincoln County is complicated, expensive, and can take a long, long time. One has to question the rationality of that process for a tax bill of less than $60 per year. The railroad, now the NKCR (Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado Railway), leasing from BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe) could take steps to collect the delinquent lease payments, but that is also complicated and expensive and probably not a top priority along the line between Holdrege and Grant, NE. So for now, the Dickens elevator survives. In its quiet setting, it is still useful, as it attracts the occasional photographer, whether rail fan, grain elevator enthusiast, or explorer who wanders by.
Barb and Bruce Selyem are directors of the Country Grain Elevator Historical Society. Contact the society at 406-581-1076; email: bselyem@cgehs.org.
