Radway is home to the 1929 Krause Milling Company Grain Elevator. Beside the elevator are the foundations of a once thriving flour mill: together with the elevator it was part of a grist mill operation located on a spur line from the main C.N. line. The mill exemplified the independent local flour milling industry that accounted for nearly one third of Alberta-milled flour in 1937. It was first licensed to produce 125 barrels (11,136 kg) of No. 1 flour per day.
Withold Krause, a second generation Alberta grain buyer and miller, who owned several other elevators and a flour mill in Leduc, built the elevator to his own design, and then began construction of the mill, which opened in 1931.The mill was a sturdily-built rectangular three-storey frame building clad with tin sheeting painted white. A basement addition on the northeast corner housed the diesel engine that ran the machinery and the steam boiler that heated the mill. The main line shaft to drive the roller mills ran beneath the first floor.
Withold Krause designed the flow line (machinery layout) inside the mill to give a flow of about 25 bushels of wheat an hour. The first floor, with solid 3 by 10 plank Douglas fir flooring, housed the tempering bin, the roller mills, and also the bagging chutes where the refinedflour ultimately finished its journey. Bags of flour were stacked for sale or collection on the east side of the first floor. The entrance to the mill and the loading platform were on the south side facing the elevator. On the second floor were the scourer and the centrifugal cloth sifters. The third floor housed a holding bin for wheat, the cylinder where the wheat was washed, and the final sifter.
Milling involved a number of steps before flour was produced. Wheat cleaned in the elevator was hauled to the mill to be scoured, washed, tempered and sent to the roller mills. The wheat was run through five roller mills referred to as breaks: each ground the wheat more finely. Each roller mill was connected with a sifter for bolting (refining) the stock (the wheat after the first break). A system of numerous small elevators (cups attached to webbing fabric moving inside wooden chutes), moved the stock between machines and from floor to floor. The flour produced was given a final sifting and bagged. Krause ordered plan white bags without the company’s logo during the height of the depression as so many people wanted to reuse the fabric for clothing.
In the 1930s Krause operated mainly as a grist mill; he took in farmers’ grain at his elevator and they took home its value in flour and by-products such as shorts and bran, picked up at the mill door. Swapping wheat for flour appealed to farmers in a cash-strapped economy. At Radway the farmer did not actually get his own wheat ground. His load of wheat, weighed and graded at the elevator, was given a value in terms of Number 2 Northern Wheat (milling grade) and he was entitled to the flour products from this amount of wheat less a gristing charge of 25 cents per bushel. In his best years, 1932-1933, Krause cleaned about 50,000 bushels of wheat in his elevator and milled it into number one “Kernel” flour and “Creamo,” cream of wheat cereal.
Krause operated the mill during the day time, which was just as well for the village as the mill was powered by a thundering Fairbanks-Morse two-cylinder, two-cycle, 120 horsepower diesel engine. As the engine burst into life, Krause’s son, Vernon recalls “the whole town would shake.”
During World War II, as flour mills in Europe shut down and flour was urgently needed for the war effort, Krause and other millers had limited access to wheat. The Canadian Wheat Board allowed small millers a subsidy on flour sold domestically to compensate, so Krause concentrated on milling for sale, selling in Edmonton and from the mill door.
After the war Krause sold the mill. From 1949 Fred Weder operated the elevator and flour mill business under the banner of the International Grain Company and Radway Flour Mills, respectively. There was a big change in how the mill was operated. Weder ran the mill 24 hours a day, six days a week, producing 140 pound (64 kg) jute bags of low quality unbleached flour for export to countries in the Far East starving due to the ravages of World War II.. Weder shifted the huge diesel engine aside and installed an electric motor. The mill started up at the flick of a switch, and ran quietly ensuring Radway residents got some sleep!
Three two-man teams—a miller and a helper/bagger—operated the mill in eight hour shifts around the clock. More workers were needed to haul clean wheat from the elevator to the mill and load the bags into railcars. The mill crew, mostly local young men, lived in a bunk house nearby. They pushed out at least three box cars of flour a week, over triple the production of the Krause years.
This new level of production took its toll on the flour mill. By 1953 the milling rollers had been pushed to their limit and all the equipment was in need of overall. Fred Weder closed the operation and put the mill up for sale. There were no buyers, and eventually it was dismantled for salvage. Today, the Krause elevator, the only remaining country elevator in Alberta that is associated with the flour milling industry, stands alone next to the foundations of the mill that it once supplied.
Written by: Judy Larmour.
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