Oakland Underfoot

The O. C. Jones & Sons company just turned 100 and is going strong from its Berkeley headquarters near Jones Street.

Founder Olin Clement Jones (1890-1954) was born and raised in northwestern Iowa. He married there and started a family, then all of a sudden moved to Berkeley in 1923 or 1924, where he started a concrete business. I have documented stamps by his firm from 1929, 1937, 1938 and 1939 in Oakland. His two sons Harold Rex (1916-2003) and Robert Carlson (1920-2007) joined the firm during World War II and its name changed. It earned its general contractor’s licence in 1947 and its general engineering contractor’s licence in 1954. Apparently by that time it no longer stamped sidewalks. Under Harold’s guidance, O.C. Jones & Sons prospered, and today its trucks can be seen wherever contractors work in middle California.

A notable local project of theirs is the roundabouts at Gilman and I-80. I expect to find more O. C. Jones stamps in Berkeley and Albany.

This entry was posted on 5 March 2024 at 8:20 pm and is filed under  Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.