Western Pipe and Steel Company - Between The Wars

Between The Wars

While many of America's First World War emergency shipyards shut down at the end of the war, Western Pipe & Steel continued to grow its business in the postwar era. The company closed its Richmond operation in 1921 and moved the plant located there to the San Francisco shipyard, which now began building barges and pipes. During this period the company is reported to have built self-propelled fuel, gasoline and water barges, and both self-propelled and non-self-propelled covered lighters. The exact number is not known, but the company's hull number sequence suggests that as many as 34 such vessels may have been completed in the interwar years.

In this period the company also began to extend its operations into other regions. The Fresno factory was expanded and in the 1930s new operations were set up in the San Francisco peninsula, and at Grand Coulee and Seattle, Washington.