CALIFORNIA BRICKS
Brand name: HIGGINS
Company: Higgins Brick & Tile Company
Location: Three plants were Gardena plant, 2217 W. 17th St., Torrance; Ramona plant, 4700 Ramona Blvd., Monterey Park (since 1946); Santa Monica plant, 2600 Colorado St., Santa Monica (since 1946), Los Angeles County, CA.
Years: 1920-1986
Type: Common brick
Description: Brand name impressed on the face.
Equipment: Stiff-mud process, dry-pan crushers, vibrating screens, combined pug-mill, de-airing chamber, and auger extruding machine, wire cutter, sun dried, field kilns.
Capacity: At Gardena plant 100,000 brick per day (7-8 mo. per yr); at Ramona 80,000 common brick per day, 60,000 commercial brick per day; at Santa Monica 100,000 brick per day.
Deposit: At Gardena, 20 acres of flat-lying brown, silty alluvium, red-firing; at Ramona, 40 acres of bedded blue-gray clay, silt, and shale (Sidehill open cut); at Santa Monica, 23 acres of flat-lying brown clay. During the 1980s, Chino pit in San Bernardino County was mined for clay.
Notes: James R. Higgins was owner.
Source: California Division of Mines and Geology, v. 50, nos. 3 and 4, 1954; California Division of Mines and Geology Special Publication 93, 1987, p. 51.
Comments or questions are welcomed.
Please send email to Dan Mosier at danmosier@earthlink.net.