Number of employees
15-29
In 1876, Lucius Garland Everist started selling retail coal in Havana, Illinois. The big railroads were moving quickly through the western half of the country, and he moved his young family to Sioux City, Iowa in 1888. Seeing opportunity in the frontier river town, he expanded the business first into coal mining and then to building supplies and materials. By the time the Panama Canal opened in 1912, his son Hubert Harpham Everist took over a business that was ready for change.