Running massive Paso Robles granary was ‘ungodly hard work’ — and cost a man his life
The Russian invasion of Ukraine and resulting grain shortages have brought the international wheat economy into the news.
Wheat and other grain farming was once central to San Luis Obispo County’s agricultural economy, and is tied to many of the origin stories of Western culture.
Wheat was on the back of penny coins from 1909 to 1958.
Today the former Paso Robles granary is a bright commercial space at the corner of 12th Street and Riverside Drive that houses Cool Hand Luke’s steakhouse restaurant and other businesses.
The building is a testament to the era of wheat and barley harvesting, which peaked here at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century.
By the late 1980s, the building was almost a century old and had seen better days.
It was remodeled into a viable retail space. The windows were enlarged, unreinforced masonry was removed and the exterior siding was replaced. A new modern steel elevator structure was built but the original 12-inch by 12-inch redwood beams and posts were preserved.
Plans were finalized in 1991 and construction followed shortly.
Telegram-Tribune reporter Gregg Schroeder wrote two stories about the structure on Jan. 15, 1987. Both stories are combined here and edited for length under a single headline, focused on the history of the building.
Granary’s ex-owner has fond memories of building
The hulking, gray granary on Riverside Avenue has seen better days.
At one time, truckloads of grain from as far away as the Carrisa Plains were dumped into masonry bins beneath the first floor of the solid redwood building.
Steel screws, 12 inches in diameter, transported the grain across the room to a vertical conveyor belt fitted with cups to carry oats and wheat up five stories to a weighing and distribution bin. Grain was then sorted by weight — and worth — to any one of 27 storage bins.
Later, the grain could be routed back to the top floor where it would be dispensed into waiting trucks or railroad cars below.
That was back when the Ernst brothers — Harold, Ellsworth, Wilmar and Eugene — owned the granary. But rising transportation costs during the mid-1970s made it too expensive for farmers to haul their bulk grain into town. The Ernsts were forced to shut down the elevator.
Now the building stands quiet. A thick layer of grain speckled dust covers the top floor and blank windows stare out from all four peeling sides of the structure. The cavernous interior is almost bare.
Much of the machinery has been removed and the huge rusting screws, lumber and brick salvaged from adjacent buildings are neatly stacked inside.
“What’s amazing is how structurally sound it is,” said Newlin Hastings who, along with James Doub and Granville Harper, heads Granary Associates [owner/developer].
Eugene Ernst has a lot of stories to tell about the granary he once owned on Riverside Avenue.
He has stories about the time a light left burning in one of the storage bins almost burned the place down had he not gone back for something and noticed the smoke in time.
And there was tragedy. Ernst remembers the time Othello Linn fell down the elevator shaft when the rope on the hand-operated lift snapped. Linn was killed.
“I’d like to be able to tell you how many tons of grain I’ve run through that warehouse,” Ernst said, describing the number as “horrendous.”
The five-story redwood granary was built by the Central Milling Co. of San Jose in 1891, Ernst said.
It was constructed as a flour mill on land purchased two years earlier from Cecilia Blackburn. The mill was sold the following year to Sperry Milling Co. of San Francisco.
Built before the days of easily accessible electric power, the mill was first powered by its own steam plant using water from a natural hot spring south of the building.
Sperry operated the flour mill until 1924. North County grain wasn’t high enough in protein for flour production, Ernst said. But it was good enough for feed and good enough for grain broker Ray D. Pelton to figure he could make money using the mill to store grain before it was shipped out of the county by rail.
Up to this time Ernst said most North County farmers sewed their grain into 130-pound burlap sacks, hauled the sacks into Paso Robles for storage and then shipped them to San Francisco or Los Angeles.
“It was ungodly hard work,” Ernst remembers. “My father said there ought to be an easier way.”
So Ernst’s father, Frank, and Pelton decided to try to transport and store bulk grain. Frank Ernst used a model T Ford to haul loose grain from outlying farms and Pelton built large bins for storing it.
Despite the savings in labor and money, many area farmers “said my father was crazy,” Ernst said. “Even after World War II, some wouldn’t change.
But the Ernst brothers were sold on the idea and decided to buy the granary from Pelton in 1949. They figured they could fill most of its 2,000 ton capacity with grain from their own fields.
Years of shipping grain followed, with Eugene Ernst running the grain elevator equipment. Long since electrified, the elevator could be run by a single worker.
One time, Ernst said that almost cost him his life.
He was operating the huge steel screws set into channels in the floor for transporting grain horizontally. Ernst slipped on some spilled grain, catching his foot between the turning screw and the floor.
“I couldn’t shut it off,” Ernst said, so he grabbed a board and jammed it into the screw.
That stopped the screw, but his bleeding foot was still stuck and the jammed machinery began to smoke. Ernst feared the whole place would go up in flames around him but he was able to pry his foot out and shut the machinery off in time.
the advantage of the granary, Ernst said, was the great number of storage bins. He was able to separate grades of grain to get the best price for each. By adjusting a few chutes and flicking a switch, Ernst could blend grains for a higher average quality, and thus get a higher price for the product.
Ernst said economics — and not the antiquity of the equipment — forced the grain elevator to shut down.
“Never did I replace one bearing,” Ernst said.
“I think it could have run another 30 years and never had any problems.”
The oil crunch of the 1970s made it impractical for farmers to haul their grain into town for storage. They began selling it directly from the field Ernst said, sending much of it east to the San Joaquin Valley rather than to the south or north.
In 1986, he traded the building for property.
Now owned by Granary Associates, the structure will become the focal point of a dining and office complex scheduled to open during the next two years.
“It’ll really be something,” Ernst said.
And knowing the building won’t be bulldozed is reassuring.
“It’ll be here long after a lot of other buildings are gone.”
