Alamo Portland and Roman Cement Company

The company kept itself alive in its early years by selling more than cement. The first plant, run by a steam engine, ground ten barrels a day, so it also burned lime, sold building stone and went into sidewalk construction, buying the rights to a process that cut sidewalk blocks into sections so they could expand and contract. Kalteyer later organized the Buckeye Portland Cement Company in Ohio. Under Charles Baumberger's will, proceeds from the company's 1979 sale went into a scholarship trust that had sent 1,802 San Antonio students to college by 1993.

What the plaque says

Alamo Portland and Roman Cement Company Near this site in 1879, Englishman William Loyd discovered a blue argillaceous limestone believed to be a natural cement rock. Analysis by San Antonio druggist and chemist George H. Kalteyer confirmed the rock contained proper proportions of lime and clay to produce portland cement. Loyd and Kalteyer, along with other investors, organized the Alamo Portland and Roman Cement Company, which was chartered in January 1880. This, the first portland cement plant west of the Mississippi, began with on intermittent pot kiln. A second pot kiln was added in 1881, when the company name was changed to Alamo Cement Company. The tall stack Schoefer-type kiln was added in 1889. Cement from this plant was used in the construction of the State Capitol and the Driskill Hotel in Austin. Through the vision and leadership of Portland Cement pioneers Loyd, Kalteyer,and Charles Baumberger, who succeeded to the presidency following Kalteyer's death in 1897, the company flourished. In 1908 the plant relocated to a site later known as Cementville near Alamo Heights. The original quarry became the Japanese Sunken Gardens in Brackenridge Park. The kiln area was designated as Baumberger Plaza in 1944. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Alamo — 2.5 mi
  Mission San Antonio de Valero before it was a fort: a church its builders never finished, a thirteen-day siege in 1836, and the Army gable of 1850-52 that became its emblem.
• San Fernando Cathedral — 2.7 mi
  The Canary Islanders' parish church on Main Plaza, where Bowie married and Santa Anna raised a red flag, rebuilt in Gothic Revival around the walls of the 1750s church.
• Spanish Governor's Palace — 2.7 mi
  The last visible piece of the Presidio San Antonio de Béxar: a presidio captain's house with a 1749 keystone, a century as shops and saloons, and a romantic 1930 restoration.
• San Antonio River Walk — 2.8 mi
  A Depression-era park one level below downtown, built because San Antonio refused to pave its river after the 1921 flood, and designed by an architect the project later fired.

More markers nearby

• Portland Cement Plants — steps away
• Acequia de Arriba — 0.4 mi
• Ludwig Mahncke — 0.5 mi
• Incarnate Word College — 0.8 mi