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IntroductionRomney, Tippecanoe Co. (615.11)INDIANA HAS A RICH and fascinating agricultural history%u2014a history that%u2019s evolved in various ways over the decades. A century ago, farming required a great deal of manual labor, and any town worth being called a town had a grain elevator sitting alongside the railroad tracks. Today, the farms are much larger and highly mechanized, the tracks are being ripped up, and the elevators are disappearing. Some elevators have been gone for decades, barely leaving a trace; others sit forlornly and abandoned, gradually turning to dust; there are probably a few being razed as you read these words; yet there are still others that remain in business, contributing to local economies. This book is a celebration of these important structures that have touched the lives of so many.When I first started thinking about this project, I only planned to photograph abandoned grain elevators. However, after visiting some intriguing older ones that were still very much in use, I decided to include them as well. Then I realized that some of the elevators were actually feed mills%u2014and some were both. So, within a short period of time, my project expanded once again to include aging feed mills%u2014and even a few grist mills. Eventually, my wife, Lynn, and I drove about 12,000 miles, tracking down leads in over 500 locations, in every one of Indiana%u2019s 92 counties. Most of the structures I photographed were built between the late 1800s and the mid20th century.While that may sound relatively straightforward, this book%u2019s journey was a long and circuitous one. In truth, it began several generations ago, required my growing up in farm country, waited for me to develop an aesthetic appreciation of Indiana%u2019s heritage, and came to fruition in the last few years when I finally responded to the plaintive call of old grain elevators and feed mills to honor them%u2014please.When my great-grandfather, Jakob, came to the United States from Bavaria in 1840, he Americanized the spelling of his name from Bauer to Bower. In German, bauer means peasant or grower, and, in fact, Jakob had been a dirt farmer in the Old Country. After he and his wife, Susanna, made their way across the Atlantic, they lived for a while in New York, then moved to Chicago, before settling in Newton County, Indiana. For $12 an acre (the going price for high-quality cultivatable land at the time), Jakob bought some acreage and settled in.