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Stockton History
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| Stockton
City and Sperry Mills building
Weber Avenue
Era: 1890 - 1900
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This
building had been purchased by the Sperry Company from the Stockton
City Flour Mill.
The Sperry Flour Company was founded in Stockton in 1852 by Austin
Sperry and a man named Lyons. Then, Samuel Baldwin and Alexander
Burkett joined the partnership and Lyons withdrew.
Flour had been hard to come by in the early days of Stockton's settlement.
Some was imported from Chile, but this was later outlawed as it
was so infested with seevils.
The first wheat used for flour making in Stockton was imported from
Napa and Martinez. It was not until 1856 that the local millers
were able to use San Joaquin Valley wheat, which they found produced
a better quality of flour.
The first milling company was very successful. Wheat supplies grew
as miners learned that it was easier and more profitable to raise
crops than to mine for gold. In 1853, Joseph Tam and William Prey
raised about a hundred acres of wheat in the Woodbridge area. The
crop was threshed by the Sargent brothers, who had sent East for
a stationary harvester. William McKendrie Carson owned the first
threshing machine in the county. In 1852, there had been only 10,700
bushels of wheat harvested in San Joaquin County. A year later,
the farmers began to plant barley as well because it was a more
valuable crop.
In the 1860's, Willard Sperry and the Sperry company began producing
their famous "Drifted Snow" flour from locally raised
wheat.
In 1857, the Sperry Mill's capacity was 150 barrels of flour a day.
They purchased the Franklin Flour Mill in the 1860's and their production
increased to 600 barrels a day by the 1870's. They became the state's
second largest flour producer. The mills operated 24 hours a day.
The Sperry Mill was destroyed by fire in 1882, but was rebuilt.
During World War I, the Sperry Company operated three mills here:
the Capital, the Crown , and the Union. By 1924, the crop production
in the valley was changing and the Sperry Company was importing
its grain from Australia and elsewhere. The mills in Stockton were
closed and relocated in Vallejo. In 1952, General Mills, which had
purchased the Sperry Mills, returned to Stockton with a feed mill,
located between Stockton and French Camp.
This building, which served as the offices for Sperry, was designed
by local architect Charles Beasley and erected in 1888. In 1917,
an addition was constructed to the rear of this building, which
matched the original exactly. The building is a Stockton landmark
and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
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Photo and information courtesy of the
Bank
of Stockton Photo Collection. |
Stockton,
CA 
on the Move!