Read time: 8 min.

I’ve been hearing rumors that the old grain elevator in Cammack, Indiana, might soon be torn down. If the elevator goes, it won’t just be another old building lost- it’ll be a piece of Delaware County’s agricultural heritage erased. Landmarks like this don’t just disappear; they take stories with them. Once they’re gone, we can’t get them back.

The town of Cammack was first known as “Switch A” thanks to its location on the Erie and Western Railroad. It was eventually renamed for David Cammack, who built a sawmill there in 1879. A post office was established in 1882, then discontinued in 1907¹. Today, Cammack is considered a neighborhood of Yorktown. It sits about two miles northwest of where I live on Jackson Pike.

Researching the town’s grain elevator is surprisingly tricky. Believe it or not, the village had two that operated around the same time! The first stood on the site of David Cammack’s sawmill². John Howell ran it from around 1899 until his passing forty years later³. Eventually, Mike and Robert Reed took over, renaming the operation Reed Brothers’ Feed and Coal⁴.

Despite its agricultural purpose, the upper story of Reed’s became an unexpected hotspot for gatherings like socials and parties. My grandma remembers driving to dances there in the early 1950s! Unfortunately, Reed Brothers’ closed in 1968⁵. The building later housed a chair factory and a workshop where fishing lures were made⁶. Today, what’s left of the place appears to be divided into apartments.

The town’s landmark elevator- the one I’ve heard is slated for destruction- appears to have been built in 1930 by the Farmers Co-Operative Company of Cammack⁷. Nearly every rural community once featured a grain elevator, but Cammack’s is unique because of its construction: instead of concrete or wood, it was built using clay tiles, a method that had already fallen out of favor by the early 20th century.

Clay tiles for silos tended to be made in a limited range of curved, hollow shapes that dictated their size. Unfortunately, that made designing efficient grain bins a challenge. Inefficiencies weren’t the only drawback, though: tile elevators were said to be notoriously difficult to seal, structurally unstable, and highly susceptible to fire damage. Ultimately, those factors made tiles a short-lived experiment in agricultural construction⁸.

Despite their flaws, clay tile silos -especially those made using the salt-glazed method -where salt added to the kiln reacted with silica in the clay to form a shiny, water-resistant seal⁹– had their time in the spotlight. Some, like the crumbling Ingersoll Tile Elevator in Oklahoma, have even earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places¹⁰! Hereabouts, I’d bet dollars to donuts that the Hoosier Building Tile & Silo Company of Albany was responsible for the elevator in Cammack along with other silos I’ve spotted on West Jackson Street, Lee Pit Road, and in rural Mt. Pleasant Township.

Regardless of the risks involved in building an enormous tower with a long-discounted method of construction, the Cammack grain elevator still stands nearly a hundred years after it was erected. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the Farmers Co-Operative Company of Cammack, which went into receivership two years after the elevator was built. The co-op’s property and assets were sold in 1935¹¹, then sold again to the Delaware County Farm Bureau Co-operative Association in 1942¹². Under the county-wide organization, the Cammack elevator joined a network that included grain facilities in Albany, Medford, Selma, and Shideler¹³. 

Although clay tile structures were considered highly vulnerable to fire, Cammack’s elevator managed to survive at least two blazes. The first occurred in 1944 when a child dropped a match into a pile of corncobs nearby. That sparked a conflagration that Muncie firefighters battled for three hours¹⁴! The second, in 1952, was even more destructive: A wagon shed burned to the ground, and flames shot up through the 15,000-bushel elevator like a chimney, scorching its upper section¹⁵.

Still, Cammack’s landmark hung on. In 1973, it became the first elevator to send feed to the Indiana Farm Bureau Co-Op’s massive, $3.2 million complex in Dunkirk¹⁶! Unfortunately, the granary’s history gets murky from there. By the late 1970s and early 80s, the elevator appears to have been home to Harshman Supply, Incorporated. Among other things, Harshman sold Beck’s Hybrid Seed Corn¹⁷ and Purina Feeds¹⁸.

By the time Harshman took over the elevator, the village of Cammack had settled into a quiet rhythm. It consisted of a modern church, an old schoolhouse repurposed as a tool-and-die shop, a weathered hardware store in a former Red Men’s lodge, and a single filling station- Pete’s Grocery. When I was ten or eleven, Pete’s was the kind of place where kids could still buy a Tootsie Roll for a penny or candy cigarettes for a quarter. Grownups lingered there, too, swapping stories while Pete made them a ham sandwich. It was a glorious little spot, one of those places that felt like it had always been there and always would be.

Things started to change when a developer with family ties to Cammack began investing in the area. In 2007, Pete’s Grocery was remodeled into Cammack Station, a wildly popular restaurant that expanded in both 2009¹⁹ and 2021²⁰. Meanwhile, the old hardware store was rebranded as Cammack Corner in a process that turned it into storefronts and apartments. Soon after, a new housing addition called Heritage Place took shape. Cammack began to boom like it never had before! 

I’m glad to see Cammack thriving. A lot of money, time, and effort have gone into transforming the place from a quiet village into the nostalgia-infused destination it is today. Still, I can’t help worrying about the old grain elevator. In a 2021 interview with Muncie’s Star Press, the owner of Cammack Station pledged to preserve the building’s architecture²¹. Given its history, its towering presence, and its rarity as one of the few remaining clay tile elevators, I’d hate to see that promise go unfulfilled.

Still, rumors persist of the tower’s impending doom. I’m not an engineer, so I can’t say for certain what’s missing from Cammack’s old grain elevator, what structural issues it might have, or whether it poses a real danger. I do know this, though: it matters. For nearly a century, that elevator has stood as a quiet sentinel that watches over the village. It’s not just a relic- it’s a reminder of the town’s working roots, of the farmers who hauled their harvest there, and of the days when places like Pete’s Grocery and Carpy’s Hardware were still fixtures of everyday life.

In an era where history is so often paved over or removed for convenience, preserving structures like the Cammack grain elevator means preserving identity. The elevator is honest: it was built with purpose, without pretense, and it has endured. Losing it would mean losing an enormous piece of what makes Cammack Cammack. I don’t know what its future holds, but I hope the town’s old grain elevator stands -repurposed- for another hundred years.

Sources Cited
1 Flook, C. (2019). Lost Towns of Delaware County, Indiana. The History Press [Charleston]. book.
2 Harris, B. (1993, August 8). History worth repeating. The Muncie Star. p. 13. 
3 Funerals (1939, October 7). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 7. 
4 BUILDING OF THE DAY #PresMonth (2014, May 24). Indiana DNR DIvision of HIstoric Preservation & Archaeology. Facebook. Retriebed February 9, 2025. 
5 Cary G.  Reed, 71, Had Been Ill 12 Years (1980, August 15). The Muncie Star. p. 13. 
6 (See footnote 2).
7 Delaware County Office of Information & GIS Services. (2025). Parcel ID: 1003302007000. Delaware County, Indiana Assessor. map, Muncie, IN.
8 (See footnote 4).
9 Glazed Tile Silo (2013, February 24). My Quality Day. Web. Retrieved February 9, 2025. 
10 National Register of Historic Places,Ingersoll Tile Elevator, Ingersoll, Alfalfa County, Oklahoma, National Register # 830004156.
11 Cammack Property Is Ordered Sold (1935, August 2). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 10.
12 Farm Co-Op To Hold Meeting (1950, January 26). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 3.
13 Seed, Feed, Grain (1953, December 4). The Muncie Star. p. 46.
14 Cammack Elevator Is Saved From Flames (1944, July 11). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 3. 
15 Estimated Loss $5,000 in Cammack Fire (1952, June 19). The Muncie Star. p. 1. 
16 First Corn for New Elevator (1970, September 10). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 8. 
17 Beck’s Hybrid Seed Corn (1978, March 31). The Muncie Star. p. 25.
18 Happy Holidays Purina Feeds (1989, December 27). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 18.
19 Cammack Station expanding to serve more (2009, October 15). The Muncie Star Press. p. 56.
20 Stefanski, C. (2021, July 22). Cammack Station to return Friday after expansion. The Muncie Star Press. p. A1. 
21 (See footnote 20).