Embossing on the cast iron seed box end plates labels this as an "Imperial" grain drill, by the La Crosse Plow Co. of La Crosse, Wisconsin. Like the other grain drill to be found in the museum's equipment shed, this unit has a wooden seed box, no fertilizer box and no press wheels. With a wooden drawbar, this drill could well have been intended to be horse drawn when built.
This style of grain drill used a pair of discs to open a furrow, into which seed was dropped, being metered by a long rod running the length of the seed box. The rod was turned by the ground wheels and had gear-like sprockets above each set of discs which dispensed seed which fell down tubes between the discs. As there were no press wheels to aid in covering the seed, a set of harrows was often pulled behind the drill to accomplish that task.
A
1906 Newspaper advertising page we stumbled across contains an instance of the
Imperial Grain Drill.
The La Crosse Works
The humble beginning of the La Crosse Plow Company started in 1860, when John M. Barclay and I.S. Bantan started the Barclay and Bantan Implement Works in La Crosse, Wisconsin. In May 1865, Albert Hirschheimer bought the small shop and carried on making horse-drawn farm equipment there, calling it the A. Hirschheimer and Company.
Hirschheimer partnered with Barclay, after the acquisition, to produce the farm implements together, until Hirschheimer would eventually be the sole proprietor. They started off on a small-scale and then began to grow as competitors began to go under. By 1893 the small shop had grown into organized company, which he renamed the La Crosse Plow Company...
In 1888, the La Cross Plow Co. had grown a substantial amount. In the early years it was Hirschheimer and Barclay that operated and did the grunt work at the plow shop. In an 1888 publication called The Industries of La Crosse, Wis., said that “ forty-five to fifty hands are employed from the year around” and that the machines built at his works “meets the wants of the farmer exactly.”...
In October 1, 1929, the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company, based in Milwaukee, purchased the failing La Crosse Plow Company for $275,000. Allis-Chalmers then had a plow line that could compete with other farm machinery manufacturers.
The La Crosse Works, as it was known from then on, went on to build a complete line of planters, listers, disc harrows, cultivators and other tillage tools under the Allis-Chalmers name. The factory was expanded and updated a number of times under Allis-Chalmers. By the late 1960s, Allis-Chalmers was consolidating operations, and the La Crosse Works was shut down. The manufacturing orf tillage equipment was moved to other Allis-Chalmers branches.
From the Weekend Historian
Kettle River Museum
The first railway to arrive in the area was the Columbia & Western, a subsidiary of the CPR. It was an extension of the CPR's line at Castlegar, intended to eventually link to the main line which ran to the coast. This link, known as the Kettle Valley Railway, was finished, finally, in 1915, linking the interior with the coast. The KVR ran from this point 600 km. west to meet the main line at Hope, BC. Built through rugged, mountainous terrain, it was hailed as an engineering landmark when completed.
The line remained in operation until, due to a changing economic climate, the KVR was abandoned and the tracks removed, beginning in 1991. Fortunately for us history buffs, a few far sighted individuals have managed to rescue this station for posterity.
As well as the station, the museum includes a main building housing smaller historical artifacts and interpretive displays of rail, mining, forestry, and agriculture heritage, an artifacts yard with larger artifacts, a caboose, a section house, a 6 bedroom bunkhouse (newly renovated and available to rent for hikers, cyclists and others) and a machine shed, which houses a plethora of mining, railroading and agricultural machinery. In this building is an old Austin Fire Truck, as well. The museum also has a picnic area shaded by a century old maple tree, grown from a seed planted by the wife of the station master.
The Kettle River Museum opened July 12, 1977 in a smaller building within the Village of Midway. That building housed many, or most, of the artifacts and displays to be found in the present main museum building. Some time after 1985 the museum was relocated to this spot to take advantage of the presence of the turn of the century heritage railway station.