John Hardin Hawes built this sixty-foot wooden grain elevator in 1904. It operated for nearly 75 years and is one of the few wooden grain elevators still standing in the United States. A grain elevator was a place where farmers paid to store grain before it was sold, a service that became necessary as improved farming techniques in the late 1800s led farmers to raise more grain than they could store on their own farms. Hawes temporarily stored grain and then shipped it to market for processing, making money by charging storage fees and by buying grain from farmers and reselling it to places such as distilleries in Peoria, Illinois. In 1904, the best location for such a business in Atlanta was at the intersection of the north-south Chicago and Alton Railroad and the east-west Terre Haute and Peoria Railroad, where access to both lines offered the greatest possible markets for stored grain.