For decades, it pierced the prairie sky, standing sentinel in western Manitoba. Austin’s grain elevator, a landmark off the Trans-Canada Highway, saw its last sunrise Wednesday.

The elevator, built in 1951, was demolished because it was deemed unfit for occupancy in 2025. Holes were visible in the walls, and there were concerns it needed to be removed before it fell over. 

Gordon Goldsborough of the Manitoba Historical Society says hundreds of wooden grain elevators once dotted the Prairies, but they’re now down to a handful.

“As a symbol of Prairie Canada, it is important to be reminded that these things are disappearing from the landscape,” he said. “I anticipate within the next few, probably two decades, maybe less, they will all be gone.”

Those casualties are part of a broader conversation about the movement of rural populations into urban centres. With the icons gone, there’s one fewer reason to come to town. That hurts the economy, closing stores, schools and churches.

“Before long, your town is gone,” Goldsborough said. “These elevator closing are a symptom of, you know, a much bigger phenomenon … of rural depopulation.”

For area residents, the elevator’s demolition marked the end of an era. Netha Hildebrand has lived in Austin for 34 years and drove by the former elevator almost every day.

“Our monument is gone,” she said. “It makes me sad…. Even when I came into town this morning, I thought, ‘Yeah, ‘I’m not going to see that anymore.'”

The community had known the elevator was coming down for a couple of months. Dozens of people showed up to give the landmark a proper sendoff.

Stephanie Quiring grew up with the elevator and will miss looking for it off the highway. Seeing it meant home was close, she said.

“It’s a very big staple of this town,” Quiring said. “It was an important thing to me.”

William Settee said the demolition was exciting to watch. But he said it was bittersweet to see a pillar of the community, marking the halfway point between Brandon and Portage la Prairie, come crashing down.

“It’s going to be so weird,” Settee said after it was gone.

Pine Creek Hutterite Colony bought the elevator in 2003.

Colony secretary Ian Mendel said it had gotten to the point it needed to come down and that repairing and maintaining it would have been too expensive. 

Mendel said working with the Rural Municipality of North Norfolk and the fire department to do it safely, and getting the right permits, was a learning experience.

“It didn’t happen in one day,” Mendel said. “It’s a learning curve … because we’ve never done something like this.”

It will be strange no longer being able to see the elevator, which could be seen from kilometres away, he said.

“It was handy for us at the time. But time moves on,” Mendel said. “There’s a huge icon gone.”

North Norfolk Reeve Ed Heppner owned the grocery store across from the elevator for nearly 20 years.

“There’s a lot of emotion attached to the people around here. And so, it’s sad to see in that sense, but we need to move forward,” he said.

Goldsborough says wooden grain elevators don’t meet the needs of modern agriculture. They are small compared with modern grain elevators and need constant upkeep.

“I anticipate within the next few, probably two decades, maybe less, they will all be gone, except for the very few that are still in museums,” he said.

He pointed to the Manitoba Agricultural Museum in Austin, which moved the community’s other grain elevator, built in 1901, to its grounds in the 1970s.

Goldsborough says it’s now the oldest elevator in Manitoba and quite possibly the country.

Preserving the elevators, like what is being done at the agricultural museum, or with the historical elevators in Inglis, takes money and volunteers, he says.

“There are still a few that are hopefully going to survive as long as there are museums,” Goldsborough said..