Harman-Toles Elevator

The prisoners who poured this elevator came from Camp Hereford, about three miles south of Hereford, which held nearly 6,000 men and was the state's only base camp for Italian prisoners. Enlisted men did camp chores unpaid, and farm contractors hired them at ten cents an hour to pick cotton, sack potatoes and onions, and process carrots. The Italians lived in two compounds, one for committed fascists and one for the king's men. A food shortage in 1945 left prisoners about twenty pounds lighter on average. All were repatriated by February 1946.

What the plaque says

Harman-Toles Elevator Holland E. Toles (1894-1941) opened a grain elevator in this area in 1926, and was joined by Vernon Harman in 1938. After Toles' death, Harman formed a new partnership with John F. and Holl Ed Toles. World War II, increased irrigation, and a federal grain program created a need for larger storage facilities. On March 1, 1945, construction was begun on this six-unit concrete elevator. Labor was provided by the U.S. government, utilizing 50 Italian prisoners of war from a camp near Hereford, under Geneva Convention provisions. The project was completed on July 10, 1945. (1974)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum — 16 mi
  The Panhandle's great collection, some two million objects behind a 1933 Art Deco hall carved with cattle brands, closed to the public since March 2025 over fire-safety violations.
• TEXAS Outdoor Musical — 17 mi
  A summer pageant of Panhandle settler life staged since 1966 in the Pioneer Amphitheater, built into a basin of Palo Duro Canyon below a 600-foot cliff.
• Lighthouse Trail — 18 mi
  The park's most walked trail, 2.8 miles each way across the canyon floor to the Lighthouse, a hoodoo of Triassic sandstone balanced on a pedestal of softer red shale.
• Palo Duro Canyon State Park — 18 mi
  The upper end of the canyon the state bought in 1933, where CCC crews built the road to the floor and the army burned the winter camps of the Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne in 1874.

More markers nearby

• Site of Old Happy — steps away
• First United Methodist Church of Happy — 0.3 mi
• Happy Public Schools — 0.5 mi
• Happy Cemetery — 1.2 mi