Lemuel Potter was a former whaling ship captain who, in 1868, built a grain elevator in La Fox, Illinois. Along with his brother-in-law Henry Barker, he constructed the building as part of a wave of industrial development in the Fox Valley.
Positioned right next to the La Fox station, the structure served as a transfer point for grain headed toward the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad. That line eventually became the Chicago & Northwestern Railway and later the Union Pacific Railroad.
Structurally, this building is a bit of a hybrid. It is essentially a one-story rural elevator, which usually means small capacity, but it actually features mechanized systems for unloading and raising grain. It represents a transition point between one-story rural elevators and taller, mechanized second-stage elevators.
Today, the elevator stands on La Fox Road. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 27, 2016.
Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons
Written by Kyle McLonely
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