Beginnings Granite Rock Company was founded on February 14, 1900 by Arthur Roberts (A.R.) Wilson and
Warren R. Porter. Wilson was born in San Francisco in 1866, graduated from
MIT with the class of 1890, and returned to California where he partnered with Kimball G. Easton in a
Bay Area street paving and construction firm known as Easton and Wilson. Easton's brother-in-law, Warren Porter, was a well connected Santa Cruz County banker, lumberman, and politician. A small granite quarry on Judge Logan's ranch east of
Watsonville supplied rock for construction of the
Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) for several years before it was acquired by Porter's bank in 1899. SP named the quarry spur at railroad
milepost 93.2 Logan, after the ranch owner. The quarry on the
San Andreas Fault minimized
drilling and blasting costs by mining rock broken by fault movement. Smaller particles of
construction aggregate were obtained close to the fault, and coarser material was more distant from the fault trace. Porter and Wilson saw its possibilities, found some additional investors, and started up the business with Wilson as Superintendent. In the beginning, quarry operations were tough; fifteen men used sledgehammers, picks, shovels and wheelbarrows to break and load broken rock onto horse-drawn wagons for the trip to the railroad line. Relief came in 1903 when the quarry was automated with
Corliss steam engine-powered McCully crusher No.3. It produced 20 tons of 2½-inch rock per hour. Crushing capacity was increased by 35 tons per hour in 1904 by crusher No.5 powered by an oil-fired Atlas tandem compound steam engine. Rock was transported from the quarry face to the crushing plant in horse-drawn, side-dump rail cars, which were loaded manually. There were about 24 men working at the quarry. The
1906 San Francisco earthquake flattened the new steam crushing plant and temporarily halted operations. Rail operations were disrupted, and the quarry operation was devastated. The earthquake's destruction created a demand for construction. In the following years, Granite Rock Company supplied materials for a number of buildings in San Francisco and around the Monterey Bay area. Among those still standing are the old Gilroy City Hall and the old San Francisco Wells Fargo Building. At the quarry in
Aromas, California, expansion was taking place. Demand for materials allowed purchase of a
Marion Steam Shovel in 1909 for loading quarry cars. A second Marion shovel was purchased in 1911 with a larger rock crusher capable of producing 175 tons per hour. The older crushers were converted to electric power and five
narrow-gauge railway steam locomotives were purchased to move broken rock from the quarry face to the steam crusher over of quarry tracks. By the early 1950s, Jeff Wilson had left Granite Rock and Anna Wilson had retired. Her daughter, Mary Elizabeth Wilson Woolpert, took over as president. Again, it was a time for growth. Wet processing and loading plants were built at Aromas, and new plants were acquired at Salinas, Felton, Santa Cruz and Los Gatos. The Company purchased its first fleet of transit mixer trucks from
Ford Motor Company in Salinas. With two young children at home, Betsy Woolpert turned the Company presidency over to her husband, Bruce G. Woolpert.
Modernization During the 1960s and 1970s, there was tremendous development of the Monterey Bay and San Francisco Bay areas. Central Supply and Granite Rock Company merged to form one company, Graniterock, for construction materials production and sales, and expansion took place in sand, concrete, asphaltic concrete and building materials operations. New plants were opened in San Jose, Redwood City, Santa Cruz, Gilroy, Hollister, Salinas and Seaside. In step with the times, Graniterock installed its first computer—an IBM System 3. Fifty 100-ton
hopper cars were purchased in 1971 and 1972 for rail shipment of sand to their San Jose and Redwood City plants. Rock from the Logan quarry was hauled north to repair the SP
Dunsmuir, California, rail yard after flood damage in 1974. A state-of-the-art, computer-controlled automated truck and rail car loading system was unveiled. All were designed to move the newly named A.R. Wilson Quarry into the 21st century. The Pavex Construction Division, formed in 1989, was now providing road and highway construction and had become one of California's premier heavy engineering contractors. A new road materials plant in South San Francisco, concrete operations in Redwood City, Southside Sand and Gravel in Hollister, two new sand plants in Santa Cruz County and recycling centers in San Jose and Redwood City were added to the Graniterock family. On February 14, 2000, A.R. Wilson's daughter, Mary Elizabeth (Betsy) Woolpert, and grandsons, Bruce Wilson Woolpert and Steve Gideon Woolpert, staged a 100th anniversary celebration for Graniterock employees, customers, and friends. New corporate offices were opened in Watsonville in 2002, and company sites were added in
Oakland,
Cupertino, and
Milpitas.
Supreme Court decision The company bought the mineral rights to of land around and at the summit of
Pico Blanco Mountain in the
Big Sur region in 1963. The peak is topped by a distinctive white limestone cap, visible from California's
Highway 1. The large, pharmaceutical-grade limestone contains an extremely high concentration of calcium in two deposits, known as the Pico Blanco body and the Hayfield body. to a billion tons, reportedly the largest in California, and the largest west of the
Rocky Mountains. The California Coastal Commission quickly notified Graniterock that it was required to apply for a coastal development permit as stipulated by the California Coastal Act. Granite Rock filed suit claiming that the Coastal Commission permit requirement was preempted by the Forest Service review. When Granite Rock prevailed in the lower courts, the Coastal Commission appealed to the
United States Supreme Court. In 1987, the court in a
historic 5–4 decision, found in favor of the commission. By this time Granite Rock's permit had expired. The company's president Bruce Woolpert stated in 2010 that he believes at some point the company will be allowed to extract the limestone in a way that does not harm the environment. , they still own the land. ==Products==