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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
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Then and Now: Central Pre-Mix concrete plant

Present day: A Holiday Inn Express sits atop a basalt outcropping at the corner of Division and North River Drive. The corner was once the site of Central Pre-Mix. The top of the bluff was a rail yard where train cars would dump sand and gravel into the mixer. (Jesse Tinsley)
Present day: A Holiday Inn Express sits atop a basalt outcropping at the corner of Division and North River Drive. The corner was once the site of Central Pre-Mix. The top of the bluff was a rail yard where train cars would dump sand and gravel into the mixer. (Jesse Tinsley)Buy a print of this photo

William Murphy, of Tacoma, formulated an idea for a business while running a steam shovel on Snoqualmie Pass in the 1920s. His family lived in a boxcar while he was on the job site. The stock market crash was reverberating through the economy when he settled on Spokane.

Murphy started one of the area’s most enduring and successful businesses, Central Pre-Mix. He and partner M.J. Burke perched a mixer on the side of a rocky outcrop beside Division Street so gravity would feed the machinery. Rail cars rolled above the mixer and dumped gravel, cement and sand.

The first year, there were two tub trucks and three men. Times were tough and the partnership dissolved early. Only 915 yards of concrete were sold in 1933. But business picked up in 1935, and the company bought its first two mixer trucks.

Murphy’s concrete built the new Rookery Building, the company’s first major project, in 1936. In 1940, Murphy built a small office by the mixer. By then there were 12 trucks and 40 employees. Over the years, the company poured concrete, opened gravel pits, sold bagged concrete mix, and manufactured prestressed beams for bridges and buildings.

The company expanded to Kennewick, Coeur d’Alene, Yakima, Moscow and several other locations. By 1962, the company had 250 employees. It poured concrete for schools, churches, banks, nuclear reactors and skate parks. In 1982, after more than 50 years, Central Pre-Mix lost its lease on Division and closed the original plant. Today, a facility on Sullivan Road in Spokane Valley produces concrete for the local market.

William Murphy, who died in 1959, passed the company to his son John, who in turn passed the management to his three sons, Michael, Tim and Dan. The Murphy family sold the company in 1997 to Oldcastle, a large corporation based in Dublin that now owns many similar businesses around the Northwest.

Dan Murphy said his grandfather had many employees who stayed with the company their entire careers.

“The CPM philosophy was to hire talented, dependable people and help them do their jobs,” he said. “They were to treat employees like family, and customers like friends of the family.”

     –  Jesse Tinsley