NORTHGATE (AP) - The days may be numbered for a couple of weathered grain elevators at Northgate.

Built more than 90 years ago, the wooden elevators used to be landmarks for travelers crossing the border between North Dakota and Saskatchewan at the Northgate portal. In the mid-1960s, the government built a new port of entry and rerouted the highway around Northgate and away from the two country elevators.

No longer landmarks and no longer a center for grain merchandising, the abandoned buildings are towering headaches for owner Bob Ganskop. The elevators cost him $115 in taxes and $900 in annual rent to the railroad for the land they sit on.

"I am trying to get rid of them," Ganskop said. "We are paying $900 a year just to sit and look at it."

He added, "It isn't much to look at anymore."

The pigeons, raccoons, deer and vandals are the only ones showing any interest in the buildings. And they haven't been kind.

Years of disuse have taken their toll, too.

The "No Smoking" sign on the wall, the intact truck scale and an old transaction book on the counter make it appear that whoever walked away might have planned to come back. But the missing boards, broken windows and dirt and debris covering the green-shag office carpet indicate that no one ever did return.

"There's a lot of good lumber in there if somebody would want to tear it down," Ganskop said.

He considered doing the job himself, but discovered he'd have to pay for an inspection to first check for asbestos and other chemicals. The cost of dismantling and hauling away the lumber priced out at $8,000 about two years ago. Ganskop decided it wasn't worth it.

The Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway won't allow burning on the site because of the risk of harm to the nearby track.

So Ganskop pays the taxes and rent. The railroad initially wanted $1,200, but Ganskop worked with a railroad official in Minot to get the rent reduced.

Russell Miller Milling Co. built the smaller elevator in 1914, after Great Northern Railway platted the town. The company's Occident Flour logo still appears on the elevator. The larger elevator, built by King Elevator Co., went up soon after as the town began to get established. Russell Miller Milling later bought the King elevator and moved it about three blocks so the elevators would stand side by side.

"I can just remember as a kid watching them move it," Ganskop said.

Movers jacked the elevator up onto tracks, but two track-type machines couldn't pull it. They brought in two farm tractors to provide more horsepower, he said.

In 1953, Peavey Co. purchased Russell Miller Milling and ran the Northgate elevators for 27 years.

Ganskop and his brother, Arthur, and a friend, Larry Olney, formed a corporation to buy the elevators in 1980, for about $40,000.

Ganskop said the company bought and cleaned grain and sold bags of fertilizer. The 40,000-bushel elevators accommodated the needs of area farmers on both sides of the border.

"We were buying some Canadian grain," Ganskop said. "We bought durum and wheat from several farmers."

Today the Canadian Wheat Board controls export sales, but at one time, Canadian farmers could buy wheat back from the Canadian Wheat Board and make money reselling it in the states, Ganskop said.

In 1986, Arthur Ganskop died, and the corporation's business slowed. Bob Ganskop said he continued grain cleaning for neighbors and used the elevators for his own storage.

"What really caused it to close was the railroad," Ganskop said. "We couldn't handle the unit cars. Everything got bigger and bigger."

The side rail was capable of handling only seven or eight cars, and the elevators usually only filled four or five. Burlington Northern wouldn't send a train up for fewer than 17 cars. The elevators hung in there for a while because a potash company that used to operate down the track allowed Ganskop to hook up a car to its train.

Now 100-unit trains that pass through Northgate stop at the huge, metal bins built by General Mills in 1998, but just rumble by the old, wooden elevators.

Northgate is one of several tiny communities in North Dakota that have abandoned, wooden elevators still standing. They catch the eye of photographers and history buffs who recognize them as relics of a different era.

Bruce Selyem, director of the Country Grain Elevator Historical Society in Bozeman, Mont., said about 27,000 grain elevators existed in the United States in the mid- to late 1930s.

The wooden elevators were built so sturdy that those not torn down or burned still stand, he said.

The big beams that hold up the structures have become valuable in the construction industry.

"The beams are pretty impressive. You can't even get them anymore. Trees just don't grow that big anymore," Selyem said.

Ganskop said the Northgate community would like to keep the elevators because of their historical significance. However, Northgate no longer is a booming little town with a hotel, bank, grocery store and other businesses. All that is gone. Where the school once stood, a bar remains as the town's only business other than General Mills.

Northgate is down to about a half-dozen residents. A similar number live in North Northgate, just across the border.

"The older generation that knew that as a landmark is gone," said Alice Ganskop, who shares her husband's feeling that it may be time for the elevators to go.

One option is to bulldoze the elevators if a neighboring landowner consents to accepting the debris for burying.

"We are going to have to figure out something in the next few years," Bob Ganskop said.