Gavilon Grain LLC, Peavey Elevator (Superior, Wisconsin)

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Consists of a steel and concrete head-house and silo bank, a battery of steel storage tanks, and a large flat storage building originally used for the receipt and protection of certain weather-sensitive grades of eastern coal.

The flat storage building is the oldest part of the facility, dating to the early 1900s. Its unique roof shape belies the fact that there were once two massive bridge cranes inside which spanned the length of the building. Two hatches in the face of the building overlooking the dock to the northwest allowed the cranes to reach out over the decks of ships and unload them with clam-shell buckets. This unique facility was originally used to receive anthracite coal mined in the eastern U.S. - a delicate material that needed to be protected from weather. Most other coal receiving docks in the port were open-air facilities, as is the modern coal export terminal located west of here on the Superior, WI waterfront.

When the grain elevator was built here in the 1960s its owners annexed the old coal flat storage building and converted it to handle grain. They even added a single fixed ship-loading spout on the western corner of the building which likely saw use during the busy grain years of the 1970s, but has been idle since the early 1990s at the earliest. It probably saw its last use during the very slow grain seasons of 1985 - '87, if not before then.

The elevator itself was built from 1964 - '66 on the site of another old coal receiving dock. The elevator was owned by the Chicago & Northwestern railroad which leased it out long-term to the Continental Grain company. The lease ended in 1986 and ownership of the facility went to ConAgra and its grain handling subsidiary, the Peavey Co., which had roots going back to the start of the Twin Ports grain business in the 1880s. Peavey ran the terminal through 2008, when ConAgra sold its Peavey division to the hedge fund Ospraie, which now operates the elevator under its subsidiary Gavilon Grain, LLC.

The elevator's excellent on-site railcar capacity and six-spout loading gallery give it a large handling capacity, and it was historically one of the busier elevators in the harbor. The sharp decline in Twin Ports grain exports since 2002 has meant several other once-bustling elevators have ceased shiploading operations, but Gavilon continues to handle around 15 - 20 shipments per season. At the current low levels of local grain business that's usually enough to make Gavilon the second or third busiest grain terminal in the port, although the level of activity here is typically far behind the perennial leader, CHS, which usually loads about three times as many ships each season.

As of 2020 the Gavilon facility loads half a dozen or so vessels a season with beet pulp pellets bound for north Africa being the primary commodity shipped, though some wheat and other grains are loaded for export here as well.