Geibisch and Joplin was a contracting and paving company in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the list of cities in Oregon, largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, Columbia rivers, Portland is ...

in the 1900s and 1910s. The company was run by Ada Joplin and her husband Anton Geibisch, married on 8 June 1892. The company built the original Brooklyn neighborhood sewers in Portland, Oregon, as well as jetties in

Coos Bay Coos Bay is an estuary where the Coos River enters the Pacific Ocean, the estuary is approximately 12 miles long and up to two miles wide. It is the largest estuary completely within Oregon state lines. The Coos Bay watershed covers an area of abou ...

and

Clatsop The Clatsop is a small tribe of Chinookan-speaking Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. In the early 19th century they inhabited an area of the northwestern coast of present-day Oregon from the mouth of the Columbia R ...

, Oregon although they primarily laid sidewalks and streets. Geibisch and Joplin also started a condensed milk plant in

Bandon, Oregon Bandon () is a city in Coos County, Oregon, United States, on the south side of the mouth of the Coquille River. It was named by George Bennet, an Irish peer, who settled nearby in 1873 and named the town after Bandon in Ireland, his hometown ...

Fines

Multiple times, Geibisch and Joplin were fined for taking too long on a paving job, including once in 1914, when the city threatened to cancel their contracts for an unfinished job on Sandy Boulevard. In 1916, Geibisch and Joplin were contracted to repair 10th avenue, from Going street to Alberta street. After they left the street uncompleted for months, they were fined $20.

Brooklyn Neighborhood Sewers

In 1909, Geibisch and Joplin was contracted to build the sewers of the Brooklyn neighborhood of Portland.

Harry Lane Harry Lane (August 28, 1855 – May 23, 1917) was an American politician in the state of Oregon. A physician by training, Lane served as the head of the Oregon State Insane Asylum before being forced out by political enemies. After a decade prac ...

, the mayor at the time, hired a man named Wright to investigate, paying him $5 a day. The city, represented by the lawyer Mr. Easterly, refused to pay Geibisch for his work, which they considered sub-standard. This outraged Geibisch, who called Easterly "a grafter, a hold-up man, and worse," saying that he "tried to hold me up for a piece of money, but I wouldn't give it! So now he's taking his grudge out no me." Geibisch threatened to fight Easterly, and he and his workers almost physically attacked Lane, who manage to calming down, saying that he "had demanded all the facts in connection with this piece of work, and they have not been forthcoming from the city engineer."

Condensed milk plant

In the 1910s, Geibisch and Joplin began expanding into the condensed milk industry. In October 1912, they began processing milk in Mcminnville, at the Willamette Valley Condensed Milk plant, after the board of directors shut it down. They were based in Portland, Oregon, making condensed milk at 7.9% butterfat in 1916, just barely above the legal requirement of 7.8% butterfat. In the fall of 1917, their newly formed Geibisch and Joplin Condensed Milk Company acquired land in Bandon, Oregon to build a milk condensing plant. The plant consisted of a two story building, 106 feet by 240 feet; as well as a detached

power station A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electrical grid. Many ...

, with dimensions of 40 by 60 feet, jutting out into the Bay of Bandon, and cost $100,000 to build, and had a capacity of 1,000 cases a day. They acquired land in McMinnville Oregon at the same time for another condensed milk plant, and both plants were operational by April 1918. The McMinnville plant soon owed $400,000 to creditors, including a $68,000 debt to milk farmers. They shut down operation of both plants in later 1918. In January 1919,

Nestlé Nestlé S.A. (; ; ) is a Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation headquartered in Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland. It is the largest publicly held food company in the world, measured by revenue and other metrics, since ...

bought both plants for $250,000, and expanded them considerably, processing 250,000 pounds of condensed milk daily in the Bandon plant.

Personal life

Anton Geibisch was born on 31 December 1867, in

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

. On August 24, 1909, Anton Geibisch hit a woman named Ms. C. A. Welch on Morrison and Fourteenth street with his car, having encountered a wet spot on the road. She was uninjured. They had one son, Gordon Geibisch. Joplin died in 1946, and Geibisch died in October 1953, at his house on SE 113rd street in Portland, Oregon.

References

{{reflist, 30em Companies based in Portland, Oregon