General Mills Frontier Elevator (Buffalo, New York)

 grain elevator / grain silos  Add category

The Frontier Elevator Company was incorporated by six Buffalo businessmen in 1886 who secured financing to build a wooden grain elevator and silo facility on the banks of the City Ship Canal. Tapping into Buffalo's rapidly expanding grain trade, the original Frontier Elevator was soon the sole point of transfer for the rapidly expanding Washburn-Crosby flour mill next door, who eventually purchased the Frontier Elevator in 1907.

Finding the original wooden elevator both a significant fire risk and insufficient to handle the influx of cargo, Washburn-Crosby razed the original elevator and replaced it with a fully modernized facility during the 1920's. The new Frontier Elevator was the largest of Buffalo's 21 elevators in operation at the time, with a capacity of 4.75 million bushels of grain and two marine legs for unloading lake freighters and barges.

Following Washburn-Crosby's purchase by General Mills in 1928, the Frontier Elevator became the nucleus of the company's rapidly growing Buffalo mill and cereal plant. Today the Frontier Elevator is one of two operational grain elevators in Buffalo, and regularly receives grain shipments from lake freighters for processing in the mill.