KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Smoke was still rolling through Lathrop, Missouri late Thursday after a grain elevator caught fire early Thursday morning.
Crews are investigating the cause, but say no one was injured.
Those who live nearby say the fire took much more than steel and grain.
"There goes our history," Melissa Branstetter said as she looked over the smoldering rubble." Because this is the last part of the railroad."
She pointed to huge piles of scrap and steel.
Parts of the structure have gone up in smoke and with them, a part of the town's history.
Ken Taylor has lived in Lathrop nearly 76 years. He watched the rails that fed the grain elevator disappear years ago.
He says the grain elevator lived on and became a stand-in symbol for the railroad that built the town.
"This was here and the town was built around it," Branstetter said.
It's one more landmark in the background of Lathrop's memories that's fading away in a cloud of smoke and ash.
"Is this going to be the end of the history of it?" Taylor wondered. "Because like I've said, it's been here since the turn of the last century. This is part of what made the town."
