Identity elements
Reference code
Name and location of repository
Level of description
Item
Title
D99659-30R
Date(s)
- 1956 (Creation)
Extent
Name of creator
Content and structure elements
Scope and content
ca. 1956. In 1956, an employee at Tacoma's Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp. plant used an overhead crane to hold a crucible of molten aluminum and pour the liquid metal into a casting mold. The Tacoma plant was originally built in 1942 for the Olin Corporation. Kaiser took over the plant in 1946 and spent over $3 million to expand and modernize the facility in 1952. It was an aluminum reduction facility. It produced pig aluminum from treated ore. The pigs weighed either 50 or 1,000 pounds. Most were sent by rail to Kaiser's Rolling mill at Trentwood, near Spokane, where they were converted into sheets and products. Some went directly to the more than 500 independent aluminum fabricators in the Pacific Northwest, who consumed the pigs directly in the operation of their own remelt and rolling mills. Kaiser closed their Tacoma plant on the tideflats in 2000. (Kaiser Aluminum News, August 1956)
Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp. (Tacoma); Aluminum industry--Tacoma--1950-1960;