The Koppel Grain Terminal

A Greek freighter picks up a load of wheat at the Koppel Grain Terminal on Pier F soon after its opening in 1961.

For 50 years, one of the more distinctive buildings dotting the Port of Long Beach's skyline has been a set of silos on Pier F.

A worker takes a sample of grain from a conveyor belt inside the silos.

These silos were dedicated in October 1961 as the Koppel Grain Terminal (on Pier A, as it was called then). Built at a cost of $2.5 million (about $19 million in today's dollars), the facility when it opened could load ships at the rate of 1,300 tons per hour and unload them at 150 tons per hour, and also had a mechanism for quickly unloading rail cars by tipping them on their sides.

In 1979, the grain terminal was taken over by Agrex, Inc., a subsidiary of Mitsubishi, and in 1987 the grain facility was converted to handle petroleum coke for Koch Carbon, and it is still in operation today.

Click here to see a photo gallery of the terminal then and now.

The terminal today is a facility for petroleum coke.