Oct 11, 20234 min read

Carthage, TX: The Carthage Milling Company

Location: 32.159964, -94.316779 | Hwy 79, across from the rodeo arena and Love's Truck Stop

Opened: November 1955

Status: Burned down in 1967

Elvis Date: November 12, 1955

I Visited On: September 30, 2023

My experience

The Carthage Milling Company was probably the most challenging place I've found, so far. There was no record of the building that I could find online or record of Elvis even being in Carthage, apart from a few ads in the paper for the company and the performance (separate). The only clue I had from the ads was that the milling building was 1 mile down hwy 79 heading to Shreveport from Carthage. The historical aerials of that section of road 1 mile down, showed next to nothing, and there is still pretty much nothing there, which wasn't very helpful. I had a feeling that that couldn't possibly be the right place.

I called a business nearby that'd been around since the 50s, hoping they'd know something. The guy that answered the phone gave me the number for someone else who might know where the Carthage Milling Co. was, but it was a dead end.

A colleague of mine then gave me the name of another person who might know where the building was. I called her at her place of business, she said she didn't know anything, but she did give me the name of someone who would probably know where to direct me. That someone was the daughter of the owners of the Carthage Milling Company, back in the 1950s and 60s. My colleague's source only had a name for me, but thanks to 3 short hours on the computer, I found a way to contact the daughter. A week later, I was sitting in her living room talking Elvis things.

*All names, including my colleague's source and the Carthage Milling Co. owners and their daughter, are being kept out of this record. The daughter wishes to remain anonymous, so keeping all their names private is the best way to do that.

History of the Carthage Milling Company & Elvis

*For the rest of this post, the daughter of the Carthage Milling Co. owners will be referred to simply as "daughter/she/her".

*All names in this account have been changed for anonymity, apart from Elvis and the Colonel.

The owners of the Carthage Milling Company constructed the building and sold Pan-O-Brand feed. If you don't know what a milling company does, here's the process broken down: The company gets an order for animal feed from a farm, store, ranch, etc. The customers can put in an order for feed with a certain amount of different ingredients (for example: a bag of feed consisting of 2/4 oats, 1/4 corn, and 1/4 barley, and so forth). The milling company puts the order together, loads it into a truck, and off it goes.

The owners of the Carthage Milling Company wanted to have a grand opening celebration with some entertainment. Jack originally wanted the Pillsbury Doughboys, but they were unavailable. His 14-year-old daughter had been keeping up with the Louisiana Hayride and she said (paraphrased), "Well, there's this guy on the Louisiana Hayride who I've heard it pretty good. His name's Elvis Presley. Why don't we try getting him?" So, Jack took his daughter's suggestion and contacted Colonel Parker about a show. Parker said they were really busy, but could squeeze the Carthage Milling Co. performance in for an afternoon show, before the crew headed to an evening show in Shreveport, LA that same day. And that's exactly what they did. Elvis was paid with a $300 check. The family has a copy of the check (pictured), but the original, along with another personal picture of Elvis, was stolen from the family a long time ago.

About 300 people showed up to the grand opening and it was definitely a performance to remember - Elvis swiveled, shook, and did his thing -- but their daughter said that looking back on it, no one really planned on Elvis being remembered; afterall, it was 1955 and no one knew that the King of Rock 'n' Roll was standing right in front of them.

One of her friends that lived in Carthage at the time, but wasn't allowed to go to the performance, "probably because of homework or something," said that her parents went to the grand opening and her mother didn't much care for Elvis. Maris' mother said, like plenty others, that Elvis was very "vulgar". Maris never ended up making it to an Elvis performance.

Only 12 years after the grand opening, the Carthage Milling Company burned to the ground. A spark flew out of one of the feed conveyor belt mechanisms and it was over in a flash. The family never rebuilt and in the 70s (based on the building's appearance), the Bell Supply Co. built a warehouse-type structure on the land. The building is a simple metal structure with the words "Bell Supply Co." faded into the yellow paint.

---------

My source has been an Elvis fan since his Louisiana Hayride days, and much of her family has passionately embraced Elvis, too, going as far as owning their own jumpsuits. Loving Elvis almost seems like a family tradition.

Pictures of the grand opening