CALIFORNIA BRICKS
Brand name: GMcBCo
Company: Gladding, McBean and Co.
Location: Lincoln, Placer County, California
Years: 1875-1942
Type: Face brick
Description: Company logo impressed on the face.
Equipment: Mixer, grinder, pug mills, wood-fired 15 circular, 2 long furnaces, 6 oil-fired round
down-draft kilns used brick, 12 oil-fired round down-draft kilns used for sewer pipe, 11 oil-fired
muffle kilns used for terra cotta, 4 dry pans, 14-mesh screen, storage bins, waste-heat tunnel
driers, side-cut and end-cut auger machines.
Capacity: 3,200,000 per year face brick.
Deposit: Clay pits 1 mile NW from plant on 480 acres. North pit had 10 ft. fire clay, 6 ft. pipe
clay, 20 ft. terra cotta clay. South pit had 8 ft. light sandy clay and 7 ft. sandy yellow clay.
Comments: Also produces terra cotta, sewer pipe, chimney pipe, drain tile, roofing tile,
garden pottery.
California State Mining Bureau Report 12, 1893-94; California State Mining Bureau Report 15, 1917, p. 322-325;
California State Mining Bureau Bulletin 99, 1928, p. 151-156; Friends of Terra Cotta, Fall 1981 newletter;
Gurcke, Karl, Bricks and Brickmaking, The University of Idaho Press, 1987.
Plant of the Gladding-McBean Co., Lincoln, CA. Taken by author, 2001.
Comments or questions are welcomed.
Please send email to Dan Mosier at danmosier@earthlink.net.