Milwaukee Cement Company

Milwaukee Cement Company
By John F. Byers Machine Company in Ravenna , Ohio -built steam locomotive Flora of Milwaukee Cement Company The limestone in the Loren pulled up the ramp to it to tilt for producing natural cement in the kilns
Terrain between Capitol Drive Bridge and Port Washington Bridge
Gauge :	probably 914 mm

The Milwaukee Cement Company was a cement factory in Milwaukee , Wisconsin. They operated a narrow-gauge railway with a gauge of presumably 914 mm (3 feet ).

history

Joseph R. Berthelet, Sr. of Milwaukee saw some rock samples in the construction of 1,873 in urban construction office caisson - foundations had been dug for the pillars of the bridge over the Milwaukee River on the North Avenue Milwaukee. The rock samples were nothing unusual, but Berthelet, a manufacturer of cement sewer pipes in the 152 West Water Street Milwaukee, immediately recognized its similarity with a peculiar limestone with a high clay content, which he often into the cement mills of Louisville , Kentucky , had seen .

He drove to North Avenue and unnoticed collected some pieces of the rock, which was chemically different from the limestone found in other parts of Wisconsin. He took these rock samples home and burned and ground them in his kitchen. From the cement mixed with water, he formed small balls the size of marbles, which he allowed to harden overnight in the air and under water. The next morning his suspicion, about which he had never spoken to anyone, was confirmed, that he had found a valuable raw material for the production of natural cement, as it was common before the invention of the Portland process.

On the bank of the Milwaukee River, at a bend in the river above the Humbold Bridge, he found a large deposit of this rock. He entrusted his discovery to his brother Henry and carefully selected business people, who joined forces and acquired the ownership rights to the meadow on the east side of the river, which was of little agricultural value due to its low location. Chemical tests indicated that the cement was of a quality comparable to that of Louisville, Rosendale and Utica.

On November 25, 1875, the partners JR Berthelet Senior, George H. Paul, John Johnston, DJ Paul, H. Berthelet and CH Orton founded the Milwaukee Cement Company. Construction work on the cement works began in the spring of 1876 and the first truckload of cement was ready for dispatch by autumn. The company was profitable from the start.

As early as 1891, with an annual production of 475,000 barrels (about 120 kg each), the company became the largest cement plant in the United States and its products were distributed in an area that stretched from Cleveland to Denver. In 1886 it invested in electrical lighting for the tunnels. In 1887, it built a new cement plant on the 150 hectare (350 acres) site between Capitol Drive Bridge and Port Washington Bridge. The office building was at 154 West Water Street in Milwaukee.

After the invention of the rotary kiln for the manufacture of Portland cement, the mining and production of natural cement became unprofitable. The company began selling Portland cement in 1907 and discontinued its own production of natural cement in 1911. The cement kilns were leased to a company that used silica products to manufacture them until they burned out and scrapped in 1910 and 1914.

paleontology

Thomas A. Greene Memorial Museum

A large number of paleontological finds from the Milwaukee Cement Company are on display today in the Thomas A. Greene Memorial Museum ^(s) , administered by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee .

Patent licenses

• Joseph Berthelet: Separator for crushed cement , patent no. 479,617, July 26, 1892.
• Henry Campbell: Improved kiln incorporating a series of grates in the bottom or eye of the kiln. Patent No. 591,897, December 30, 1897.

Web links

• Milwaukee Public Library
• Devonian exposures at the Milwaukee Cement Company Mill # 2 quarry on west side of the Milwaukee River, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (circa 1890s). In: Donald G. Mikulic and Joanne Kluessendorf: Gilbert O. Raasch, Student of Wisconsin's Ancient Past.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Susan Parker, Byers Industrial 0-4-0 Geared Locomotive.
2. ↑ Byers Geared Steam Locomotives.
3. ^ ^{A b c d} Howard Greene and William T. Berthelet: The Milwaukee Cement Company. In: The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol. 33, No. 1, September, 1949, pp. 28-39.
4. ^ David Holmes: Why the Estabrook Dam Was Created: Ancient geological conditions created troublesome stretch of the Milwaukee River which led to unique solution. Part 2 of a series. November 30, 2015.
5. ^ Milwaukee Cement Company's Works.

Coordinates: 43 ° 5 ′ 40.5 ″  N , 87 ° 54 ′ 8.8 ″  W.