On Jan. 23, JOHN J. BOLAND arrived light at Milwaukee and headed up the Kinnickinnic River to COFCO. All grain (soybeans) remaining in the elevator was loaded onto the BOLAND and taken to COFCO’s Chicago terminal. COFCO then closed the Kinnickinnic elevator and sold the property.

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This move comes as no surprise. Operating a museum of mechanical engineering is expensive. There is barely enough grain traffic out of Milwaukee to support a single facility. And the century-old Kinnickinnic elevator could not compete with the new Agricultural Export Facility, financed primarily by taxpayer dollars, scheduled to open later this year.

Built by the Chicago & North Western Railway, the Kinnickinnic elevator, which stands near the mouth of the Kinnickinnic River, began accepting grain in fall 1916.

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This original section included a workhouse and 72 circular concrete bins (six rows of 12), each 15 feet in diameter and 90 feet high. Its storage capacity was 1.5 million bushels.

When the Kinnickinnic elevator opened in 1916, grain arrived almost exclusively by rail in 40-foot boxcars. These could typically carry between 1,500 and 2,000 bushels. Today grain is transported by rail in covered hoppers capable of carrying 3,500 bushels. Modern grain trucks can usually haul about 1,000 bushels.

Updike Grain of Omaha operated the facility until 1921 when Donahue-Stratton, a Milwaukee grain dealer, acquired Updike’s lease. Donahue-Stratton would become Stratton Grain in 1935.

An annex was completed in 1930 just north of the existing structure. 48 concrete tanks (four rows of twelve) were added, each 25 feet in diameter and 90 feet high. This increased capacity to 3.5 million bushels. New railcar handling equipment allowed a 40-foot boxcar, which typically carried about 1,500 bushels of grain, to be unloaded in six minutes.

In 1938, officials at Stratton Grain would declare the Kinnickinnic elevator to be one of the fastest at handling grain in the United States. They claimed 700,000 bushels could be spouted into boats in an eight-hour day. That equates to a rate of 87,500 bushels per hour. By comparison, Milwaukee’s new Agricultural Export Facility will load 40,000 bushels per hour.

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The next major improvement was the installation of a marine leg in 1940. This device extracts grain from vessels and could unload 15,000 bushels per hour. The Kinnickinnic elevator was now able to handle incoming shipments by water. In its first test, 250,000 bushels of wheat originating in Duluth bound for Chicago was transferred from water to rail at the Kinnickinnic elevator.

Lake-rail shipping costs were competitive with those of an all water route to Chicago. In future years, the elevator would receive a substantial amount of Canadian malting barley for Milwaukee’s brewing industry.

In 1960, New York based Continental Grain replaced Stratton as operator. By then more grain was arriving by truck, so Continental invested in a “new high speed truck dump” that could empty ten trucks per hour. This would not be enough. In 1979, a second dump was added that allowed the Kinnickinnic elevator to handle up to 30 trucks per hour.

Milwaukee received an interesting offer in early 1970. The Chicago & North Western would sell the Kinnickinnic elevator to the city for one dollar. It was the only elevator in Milwaukee accessible to oceangoing vessels and had handled 217,000 tons of grain in 1969.

According to Port Director John Seefeldt: “Unless something is done, the elevator will close.” City leaders did not accept this offer. Continental would ultimately acquire the property and keep it open.

By 1979, the Kinnickinnic elevator’s loading rate had been downgraded to 30,000 bushels per hour when loading vessels, and its storage capacity was now listed as 3.1 million bushels. The elevator would typically operate 24 hours a day for a month at the beginning of the shipping season, and then again for a month during fall harvest. Other times, it was generally open eight hours per day.

Minneapolis based food giant Cargill acquired Continental’s commodity marketing business in 1999. (NOTE: From 1958 to 1989, Cargill owned and operated Elevator E built by the Milwaukee Road along the South Menomonee ship canal. Because this channel was narrow and shallow, larger oceangoing vessels could not access the Cargill elevator.)

Concerned with market concentration, the Justice Department approved the deal only after Cargill agreed not to buy several facilities, including Continental’s Milwaukee terminal.

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So in late 1999, the Kinnickinnic elevator was sold to Chicago & Illinois River Marketing, a subsidiary of Dutch grain trader Nidera.

The last inbound cargo received by water at the Kinnickinnic elevator was 14,097 metric tons of barley from Asnaes, Denmark. It came to Milwaukee in late October 2014 aboard Polsteam’s SKAWA. Because the elevator’s marine leg was no longer working, SKAWA tied up south of the elevator. Barley was then scooped out using clamshell buckets attached to her onboard cranes, dropped into trucks, and then hauled about 800 feet to the elevator. This was a time consuming project requiring over 400 truck trips from vessel to elevator (load limits did not apply).

The Kinnickinnic elevator became known as the COFCO elevator after the China Oil and Foodstuffs Corporation completed its takeover of Nidera in 2017. COFCO Group is China’s largest food processor, manufacturer, and trader. It is a state-owned enterprise based in Beijing. In January 2023, COFCO closed the elevator and sold the 10-acre parcel to Ozinga, a concrete supplier, for a reported $4 million. No plans for the property have been announced, but it no longer will be used to handle grain.

On Tuesday, a Port Milwaukee spokesman said, “The Port is looking forward to the future of this property in Milwaukee Harbor becoming fully realized. The Port is also looking forward to the export of agricultural products continuing on Jones Island with the opening of The DeLong Company’s Agricultural Maritime Export Facility later this year.

"Thanks to a robust public-private partnership, the DeLong development is the largest one-time investment in Port Milwaukee since the 1950s that will create jobs, support Wisconsin’s agriculture industry, and grow the regional economy.”