Grain Elevators
Canada hasn't exactly set the world afire with its contributions to the field of architecture; in fact, it's most distinctive form of building may be the ubiquitous grain elevators found throughout the prairies, warehouses built to store wheat before it was shipped off by the railroad. Most are wooden - the more modern ones are made of steel - but both have the same simple, functional lines rising above the flat prairie land that have earned them the nickname 'prairie sentinels'. The first grain elevators were built in the 1880s and by 1938 there were 5800 dotted across the region emblazoned with the names of the small towns they mark. However, as transportation of grain switched from rail to road their numbers dwindled to the present 700. In 2000, the Canadian Wheat Board decided to build massive central concrete terminals at main transit points, a move that will make the old-style elevator redundant and no doubt dramatically alter the rural prairie-scape. Grain will now travel by trucks from the new terminals, much to the detriment of the region's already absymal roads. In Inglis , a tiny town on the west side of Riding Mountain National Park, about 20km east of the Saskatchewan border, a row of 1920s elevators beside an abandoned railway line has been declared a National Historic Site. With very little local concern to preserve the grain elevators, these may be the only "castles of the New World" to survive.
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