Lehigh Hanson history

Since the company's cement was being shipped as far west as Kansas City, another plant was built in Mitchell, Indiana in 1902.

The following year a third cement plant was constructed in Ormrod, and in 1906 a second, larger plant was built in Mitchell.

On April 25, 1910, the newly formed company produced its first cement.

In 1914 the company moved into the Pacific Northwest by purchasing a two-year-old plant in Metaline Falls, Washington.

By 1920 Lehigh Cement was the nation's biggest cement company in terms of number of plants, with annual production of more than 12 million barrels of portland cement.

The company moved into the South in 1923 by building one of the region's largest cement plants in Birmingham, Alabama.

In 1925 Lehigh purchased four plants from cement companies: in Alsen, New York; Union Bridge, Maryland; and Bath and Sandt's Eddy, Pennsylvania.

Edward M. Young, another of the original founders and the proprietor of a family hardware business, succeeded Trexler as president in 1926.

These acquisitions, and that of a Buffalo, New York facility in 1927 brought the company's empire to 21 plants in ten states.

Business was declining even before the Great Depression, however, for in 1929 the company had net sales of only $19.3 million, and its net income had dropped to $2.7 million.

Cement prices in the United States reached a peak of $2.02 a barrel in 1930.

Subsequent years were profitable, even though net sales fell as low as $9 million in 1935.

Lehigh Cement's remaining plants had production capacity of 22 million barrels a year in 1940, or more than eight percent of total United States productive capacity.

After World War II, revenues and profits rose rapidly, and without any growth in the number of plants and an actual drop in productive capacity to 21 million tons, Lehigh Cement had net income in 1950 of $6.6 million on net sales of $44.3 million.

OK Ready Mix has been serving the building community in British Columbia since 1953 and is now a division of Lehigh Hanson Materials Limited, a local business with global connections.

In 1955 Lehigh Cement was engaged in a $15 million project to triple the capacity of its Union Bridge, Maryland plant to three million barrels capacity.

Net income of $12.1 million on sales of $100.6 million in 1959 was far higher than Lehigh would again earn, at least as an independent company.

By 1960 the company's capacity had passed 31 million barrels.

Joseph Young's son William J. Young succeeded his father in these positions in 1964.

Back in 1967, three Rempel brothers started their own ready-mix business to serve the building trades in Abbotsford.

The trend continued into the next decade, with Lehigh ending operations in Birmingham, Iola, and Fogelsville in 1971 and selling its Buffalo plant the same year.

In 1974 Lehigh Cement completed the FTC-ordered divestiture by selling its six Kentucky concrete plants. It sold its 11 Virginia concrete plants to Florida Rock Industries Inc. in 1972, following an order by the Federal Trade Commission directing it to divest itself of the 17 Virginia and Kentucky plants.

In 1974 Lehigh Cement completed the FTC-ordered divestiture by selling its six Kentucky concrete plants.

In June 1975, Centex Corporation acquired 363 acres of limestone-rich land near Buda (limestone is the primary raw material necessary for the manufacture of cement), where it established a new cement manufacturing facility, Texas Cement Company.

In 1976, Lehigh Cement's last year as an independent operation, the company sold the Georgia rug, carpet, and yarn business to its executives.

Lehigh Cement sold Universal Atlas's Hannibal, Missouri cement plant in 1981 to a newly formed, foreign-owned concern, Continental Cement Co.

In 1984, the plant successfully produced Class H Oil Well cement, making it the first flash calciner pyroprocessing facility in the United States to manufacture this product.

It was decommissioned in 1985 upon the successful production of the Class H Oil Well cement in Buda.

The Metaline Falls facility was sold in 1989 to Lafarge Corp., a French-owned firm.

In 1993, HeidelbergCement acquired its Canadian operations.

Lehigh also was beginning a $200 million modernization and expansion of its Union Bridge plant in 1998.

Allied Ready Mix Concrete, was purchased by Lehigh Hanson in 2008.