Graniterock Company’s roots lie deep in the history of the central California coast. In fact, its story began more than 200 million years ago, when a mass of molten granite began to push up from the depths of the earth through limestone, sandstone and clay on the bed of an ancient ocean. The granite cooled, contracted and cracked, and was folded, broken, crushed and uplifted as the Pacific Plate slowly drifted by the continent of North America. The fortuitous location of the granite directly upon the San Andreas Fault would ease future mining of this pre-fractured rock.

But it wasn’t until 1769 that Europeans would come upon the scene. The Portola Expedition camped on the Pajaro River and noted the giant trees with red-hued wood growing there, but the nearby granite deposit would not be noticed for another 100 years. In 1871, while forging the main coastal line of the Southern Pacific Railroad near Chittendon Pass, just nine miles east of the little town of Watsonville, civil engineers found granite in their path. This rock would work perfectly as ballast to form railroad beds as track was laid throughout the state.

On the heels of the Gold Rush, easterners were arriving in the West looking for a new life. Teenager Joanna McIntyre came across the Isthmus of Panama with her sisters and widowed mother. In California, she met and married Enoch Wilson, a San Francisco shopkeeper. Their son Arthur was born in 1866. A bright and energetic young man, his parents sent him to study engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Upon his graduation in 1890, Arthur Roberts Wilson returned to California to begin his career as a construction engineer. He served a term as Oakland City Civil Engineer, and ran the Leona Heights Quarry there.

Meanwhile, in Santa Cruz County, another young Californian was making his mark on the growing state. Lumberman, banker and politician Warren Porter was the son of local banker John T. Porter. He saw a good business opportunity in the tiny granite quarry at Aromas. Warren Porter asked Arthur Wilson to join him and four other investors in buying the quarry, and to operate it as well. A.R. Wilson borrowed $10,000, moved with his wife and three small children to Watsonville, and joined in incorporating Graniterock Company on February 14, 1900.

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. Workers were paid $1.75 per ten-hour day to produce 12 tons of broken rock in sizes of 6-inch and minus. Men slept at the quarry bunkhouse and ate at the cookhouse. Breakfast was served at 5 A.M. — work started at 6 A.M.

Relief came in 1903 when the quarry was automated with a steam powered No.3 McCully crusher. It produced 20 tons of 2 ½ inch rock per hour. By 1904, rock was transported from the quarry face to the crushing plant in horse-drawn, side-dump rail cars, which were still loaded by hand. There were about 24 men working at the quarry.

Then disaster struck. The San Andreas Fault had created the quarry, and now it destroyed what stood in its path. The 1906 Earthquake flattened the new steam crushing plant and put a halt to operations. Train rails were twisted, rail cars overturned, and the quarry operation generally devastated. A.R. Wilson joined the disaster relief effort, hauling all the bread he could find in Watsonville to San Francisco to help feed the stricken city.

Fortunately, the earthquake’s devastation created a new demand for construction, and it did not take Wilson long to get things up and running again. The quarry’s output went primarily for railroad ballast in those days, but Wilson also acted as a general building contractor. Graniterock Company, with California State Contractor’s License No. 22, built a number of important 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.

As automobiles began to replace the horse and buggy, street paving became a necessity. Graniterock Company received its first street contract for placement of water-bond macadam on Lake Avenue in Watsonville, from Walker Street to the northeast city limits. The total contract, including grading and gutters, amounted to $18,000. In 1915, the California State Legislature passed a bill to encourage the modernization of streets. It was known as the “Get Out of the Mud Act,” and with it, Graniterock salesmen were busy signing up neighborhoods to pave their streets. Over the next few years, the streets of Santa Cruz and Salinas were paved with Graniterock concrete.

World War I caused freight costs to skyrocket, and as a result, local plants were developed so that rock could be sold in small truck lots. Graniterock Company built bunkers along the railroad from South San Francisco to San Luis Obispo to supply local construction business. Construction was booming throughout California, and Graniterock Company was expanding with the state's growing needs. In 1916, a railroad was built to Southern California’s Doheny oil fields, and Graniterock sent men and machinery as far south as Santa Maria to do the work. In 1918, Graniterock built the highway connecting Castroville with Moss Landing. Employed on this “Cauliflower Boulevard” job was a worker from Salinas named John Steinbeck.

At the Aromas quarry, expansion was taking place as well. In 1909, a Marion steam shovel was purchased to further mechanize operations, and in 1911, horse drawn carts were replaced with a Porter steam locomotive to haul broken rock from the quarry face to the steam crusher. The steam shovel loaded rock onto wooden-sided Western Dump rail cars. Men then climbed up on the rail cars and broke the big rocks with a sledgehammer. If the rock wouldn't break, it would be dumped off the car for the powder crew to dynamite. At San Francisco’s Panama Pacific Exhibition in 1915, Graniterock won the Gold Ribbon for excellence in crushed rock.

In 1922, the first of a number of important business changes took place at Graniterock. Warren Porter had suffered financial losses in a speculative venture with the Java Coconut Oil Company, which took over his interest in the company. A.R. Wilson later purchased this stock, and became majority shareholder and president. Also that year, Wilson started Granite Construction Company as a separate entity and became its first president. In 1924, Wilson started Central Supply Company, which distributed materials. Graniterock Company remained the producer of rock and sand products for construction projects and materials sales.

Also in 1922 the 56-year-old Wilson, recently widowed, married youthful Anna R. Weiss of St. Louis, Missouri, and began to raise a new family. Their first daughter, Mary Elizabeth, was born in 1926, and a second, Anna Ruth, in 1929. In the meantime, A.R.’s son A.J. “Jeff” Wilson assumed the vice-presidency of Graniterock.

All was going well until one day when, driving home from work at the quarry, A.R. Wilson suffered a massive heart attack, and died. His wife Anna, now 43 and with two toddlers to rear, assumed presidency of the company, and Jeff Wilson took over as General Manager. All of this took place just ten days before the stock market crash of 1929.

The Great Depression took a heavy toll on American business, and Graniterock was no exception. Work was so scarce at the quarry that a whistle was blown to call men in when as little as one car of rock was ordered. The Board of Directors had to ask permission from the Federal Reserve Bank in order to give Christmas bonuses. Unable to offer regular employment, the company made interest free loans to employees to cover medical bills. Struggling to keep its three companies afloat, the Wilson family sold its interest in Granite Construction Company to Walter Wilkinson and Bert Scott in 1936. South San Francisco, San Jose and San Luis Obispo branches of Central Supply Company were also sold.

However, in the 1930s, some progress did take place. Central Supply opened California’s first asphaltic concrete plant in Aromas, and began California’s first delivery of pre-mixed concrete in tiny dump trucks. This concrete went for projects such as the WPA's construction of the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium.

World War II brought new activity at Graniterock. Materials were needed to build Fort Ord, Camp McQuaide and the Navy airstrip in Watsonville. Many men were away serving in the armed forces and working in war plants, so workers came from Jamaica to fill their jobs. And for the first time, if only temporarily, women were employed at the quarry. Also during this time, a new plant was built at Asilomar in Pacific Grove, and excavation of the mining face at the Aromas quarry brought it down 100 feet, now level with the train tracks. A new primary crushing plant was built at the lower level, with a grand opening in 1946.

By the early 1950s, Jeff Wilson had left Graniterock 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. Central Supply 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.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Graniterock grew with the tremendous development of the Monterey and San Francisco Bay areas. Central Supply was merged with Graniterock to form one company 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, Hollister, Salinas and Seaside. In step with the times, Graniterock installed its first computer—an IBM System 3.

In the 1980s, aware that operations at the Aromas quarry were becoming outdated, the company undertook a major investment in beginning a complete quarry modernization. First, a giant mobile primary crusher was designed and built—the world's largest of its kind. Conveyors were installed to carry rock from the primary crusher to a new wash plant and secondary crushers. Finally, 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 1990s brought new innovations. The Pavex Construction Division, now providing high quality road and highway construction, 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. “Quality by Design” became the byline, and in 1992, Graniterock won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the Nation's highest honor for business. The company was named one of the country’s 100 Best Places to Work by Fortune Magazine.

Commitment to community service, always a company priority, was expressed in many new ways. Annual 4th of July “Pops and Rocks” concerts to benefit the United Way began at A.R. Wilson Quarry. Graniterock people began an effort to share quality practices with the public schools of Santa Cruz County, and their annual United Way contributions became a major source of funds for charitable organizations.

On February 14, 2000, A.R. Wilson’s grandson, Bruce Wilson Woolpert, welcomed 1,650 Graniterock people, customers and friends to San Francisco’s Moscone Center for a gala celebration of 100 years of commitment to the values of quality, innovation and respect for people which were first established by the company’s founder. After a keynote address by President George H.W. Bush, more than 30 educational seminars were presented. Now, still family owned and operated, Graniterock Company employs over 650 people in 18 locations stretching from South San Francisco to Monterey.