Grain and time
Farmers Supply Mill looks back on 118 years of changing times

James Conrad "Con" Temple, owner of Farmers Supply for the last 30 years./Photo by jared Boyd

by Jeff Mannix

Farmers Supply Mill, now located on Sawmill Road across the Animas from Bodo Park, has been doing Durango business for 118 years. The business, which specializes in feed and farm supply, was first established in 1888 as the G.H. Clark Co. at 148 West Ninth St., now the parking lot of Toh-Atin Gallery.

Durango was enjoying the prestige of being one of the first cities in Colorado to receive electricity in 1888. Main Avenue was experiencing durable development; money was flowing from the mines and Durango's smelter; people were getting rich; and town was sprouting mansions, fashions, fun and reputation.

Frederick V. Kroeger, the father of our own Frederick W. "Fred" Kroeger, bought the Clark business in 1921 and renamed it Farmers Supply. It was a bustling business offering livery, farm supplies, hardware, coal, animal feed as well as providing a locus for tall tales, advice, camaraderie and the incidentals of life on the burgeoning frontier.

Business grew with the town, branches were opened in Aztec and Farmington. In 1940 when young Fred came home from finishing college, got married and was awaiting a job after taking a Civil Service examination, papa offered him a full-time job in the store where he had been working part time since he could remember. The job paid $1,500 per year, and Fred got to work zigging and zagging to keep the business ahead of rapidly changing times.

In 1943 Farmers Supply built a granary across from the store, where Toh-Atin now sits. Then, in 1956, they put in a grain elevator across the railroad tracks behind where the present Kroeger's Hardware is located. In 1965, Town Plaza was developing, so the elevator was moved to its present location on Sawmill Road. The Kroegers then developed the old elevator site for Montgomery Wards (now City Market) and built Kroeger's Hardware in 1967. At the same time, they constructed a new grain mill in place of the old Graden's Flour Mill on the present site of the Doubletree Hotel.

James Conrad "Con" Kemple came to work at Farmers Supply on the Animas River in 1972, emigrating from the Texas Panhandle, where vast swaths of grain and cattle struggled endlessly against wind, tornadoes, drought and wind chill. After two years, the Kroeger brothers Fred and Jack, pursuing new interests, dealt Farmers Supply to Kemple, about the same time that Denver Rio Grande Western Railroad evicted the operation from the riverfront property.

"Fred Kroeger was my savior," Kemple says with true devotion. "He pulled some strings up in Denver with a state senator friend of his, and the railroad gave me a 12-month extension on our lease, enough time to purchase the property where we've been since 1974."

Nothing falls into place without glitches, of course. And the obstacles to the purchase of the property and equipment that was to become Farmers Supply Mill mounted. "I went to every bank in town trying to get a loan to relocate the mill to the Sawmill Road location," Kemple says with remembered exhaustion, "and everyone turned me down." The promise of having a business of his own was fading fast when one night Kemple got a call from Jack Kroeger.

"Jack called me late one night from the packing plant next to the Sawmill Road property I was trying to acquire," tells Kemple with intrigue. "Jack played poker with a regular bunch every week in the offices of the plant, and he says to me, 'get right down here, and bring those plans with you.'" He got dressed, gathered up his drawings of the new mill, and drove down as instructed, certainly with butterflies in his stomach after having unsuccessfully shopped his project all over town.

At the poker game in the packing plant that's now the UBC lumber yard, Kemple sat down at the table beside Jack Kroeger, brothers Steve and Paul Simon, who owned the adjacent property as part of a log mill, and Dick Turner, chairman of the Bank of Durango. "Jack took my plans, shoved them toward Turner, and asked him why his bank wouldn't lend money on this established, profitable business in which he was partner," Kemple recalls, still with a little shiver. "Dick asked me how much I needed. I told him $90,000, which was a lot of money at the time and is still a lot of money," exclaims Kemple.

After a long silence, Kemple finishes the story. "Dick says right out that he sees no reason why his bank wouldn't lend the money, thinks it over for a minute, and says 'Well, let's make it a round 100,000, easier to do the numbers,' and that's how come I own this business. From a poker game."

Farmers Supply Mill has been owned by Kemple since 1974, and since that time he's shared the profits with Jack Kroeger and the Simons. Kemple's loyalty to these men is palpable, and at age 70, Kemple is still grateful and happy with the arrangement.

It's obvious that a feed mill in these days of urbanizing Durango and suburbanizing La Plata County is becoming a relic of the past. "You're right," Kemple admits. "Back then, we used to have 13 or so dairies and 25 or 30 big cattle ranches that we served. Now those dairies have been driven off by regulations that can be met only by big operations and the ranches have been split up for housing. We had some bad times in the '80s, but since then, we've come back with a pretty good horse business."

Farmers Supply Mill is one of the oldest dealers of Purina feeds in the country, and for the past 10 years or more, Purina's Equine Senior horse feed has swept the horse industry and put Con Kemple on the map again here in La Plata County, a county with more horses than any other in Colorado.