There are media event trips, and then there are the kind of trips that remind you why you fell in love with this industry in the first place, and continue to sacrifice much to keep working in it. My recent visit to Lewiston, Idaho, to participate in CCI Ammunition's celebration of its 75th anniversary was very much the latter. I honestly can't remember a time when CCI wasn't part of my life as a shooter. CCI Standard Velocity, in particular, has been a constant presence for about as long as I can recall picking up a .22. The brick on the shelf, the box in the range bag, the stuff you grab without even thinking about it because you already know it's going to run. Most of you know that CCI Standard is a staple here on The Rimfire Report, and for almost 7 years now, CCI has been along with me for the ride as I dig myself deeper and deeper within the rabbit hole that is rimfire firearms and ammunition. Somewhere along the way, I ended up being unofficially designated as TFB's resident "rimfire guy," which still feels a little strange to type out since rimfire is in reality a very small portion of my overall shooting. So getting the invitation to be part of CCI's 75th anniversary celebration wasn't just exciting from a "journalist" standpoint; to me, it was genuinely humbling and an honor I didn't take lightly. If you've read more than a couple of these Rimfire Reports articles, you already know how much CCI ammunition shows up in articles. It's hard to have a rimfire-focused series and not run into CCI constantly, because chances are good that whatever indoor or outdoor range you're shooting at, if it's rimfire, CCI’s got something for ya. So when the invitation came to head out to Lewiston for the company's 75th-anniversary festivities and a personal tour of its facilities, I couldn’t pass it up. A Quick History LessonBefore getting into what I actually saw on this trip, it's worth backing up to explain why Lewiston matters so much in the first place. CCI, or Cascade Cartridge, Inc., traces its roots to the mid-1940s, when brothers Vernon and Dick Speer relocated to Lewiston to get into the reloading components business. Vernon's bullet-making operation, Speer Bullets, took off first. Dick followed with plans to make brass cartridge cases, but the timing wasn't great as brass was hard to come by, and the case business never found its footing. So Dick pivoted to primers instead, bringing on an explosives chemist in 1951 to help him develop small-arms primers that were both non-corrosive and non-mercuric, a meaningful improvement at the time. This is what would birth CCI as we know it today. What I find charming about the early years is how unglamorous they were. I’ve been reading J.J. Reich’s history on the company, and Dick reportedly bought a small chicken ranch next to the Lewiston Gun Club to house the new operation, and the first primers were quite literally produced out of a converted chicken coop (there is still a photo of it in the Lobby of CCI HQ). From that same chicken coop came a company that, by 1956, had a full commercial primer lineup, including the No. 200, 300, 400, and 500 primers that reloaders still load with today. CCI's jump into rimfire didn't happen until the 1960s, when again, they weren’t strictly after the ammunition side of things. Instead, the company began producing power loads for powder-actuated nail guns used in construction. Today, this is still a major part of their business, and chances are, if you’re in a field of work that requires it, you’ve probably used power loads that were manufactured in Lewiston right alongside the Snake River. This particular venture into power loads lent itself directly to rimfire sporting ammunition, and in 1963, CCI started loading its own .22 LR. The Mini-Mag arrived shortly after with the tagline "make your .22 shoot like a magnum," and it's been a mainstay of the rimfire world ever since. From there, the decades brought the Stinger, the Velocitor, the segmented subsonic hollowpoint of which I am a huge fan, the original 17 HMR collaboration with Hornady, and a long list of greatest hits most rimfire shooters would recognize instantly, even if they didn't know the backstory. Today, CCI and its sister brand Speer operate three facilities spread across roughly 400 acres and over 350,000 square feet of manufacturing space in and around Lewiston, employing about 1,100 people who keep the lines running 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Two of those plants sit about a mile apart in their original locations along the Snake River, with the Craig Mountains as a very nice backdrop for the whole operation. A separate primer facility runs out of the nearby Southport Business Park. It's a genuinely massive footprint for a company that started in a chicken coop, and walking through it in person is the only way to really appreciate the scale for myself. So off to Idaho I drove. Behind the CurtainMy trip was broken into two parts. The first day was reserved for a private, guided tour of the facilities, just me, with CCI staff walking me through essentially the entire operation. The second day culminated in the actual anniversary celebration that evening. I'll be honest, I went into the tour expecting to see "ammo being made," in the same generic sense most outsiders picture it. I’ve been to some other ammo plants and had expected much of the same, but what I got instead was a genuine education in just how many discrete, precise manufacturing steps go into something most of us toss in a range bag without a second thought. At the Southport facility, I got to stand in front of the rimfire case stamping machines, watching coils of copper sheets get punched and formed into rimfire cases at a pace that's honestly a little hypnotic to watch in person. I probably stood in front of the stamping machines mesmerized for a solid 5 minutes. From there, I followed the process onto active rimfire loading lines, watching cartridges move from empty case to finished, packaged round in one continuous, mechanized sequence. Priming obviously happens in a different step, and it was cool to see the “spin priming” process being done in person, always with direct human involvement in the QC process to make sure every step is being done to spec. Seeing a loading line running live, rather than as a still photo in a press release, gives you a real appreciation for the tolerances involved. Every step has to be right, every single time, because there's no room for error when you're producing this volume of ammunition. This is part of the reason facilities like CCIs are designed in such a way that if a catastrophic explosion were to occur in any section of the plant, it would be contained to minimize damage and secondary explosions. I also got to walk through the copper plating areas, where various projectiles get their plating treatments, and got a look at Speer Gold Dot production, which was a nice reminder that CCI's home turf produces more than just rimfire. Speer's centerfire defensive ammunition shares the same DNA and the same obsessive attention to process. I also witnessed some small batch LEO contract ammunition being made, which also demonstrates that CCI does, in fact, specialize in ammunition when it makes sense for them to. Rounding out the tour, I also got a peek behind the curtain in CCI’s on-site laboratory, where I got to talk to their engineers about some very exciting developments coming to the rimfire world. Since CCI is considered an ITAR facility, I obviously wasn't able to photograph everything since there are understandably some areas and proprietary processes CCI keeps under wraps, but I did manage to grab a handful of behind-the-scenes shots along the way, which I've included here to give you at least a glimpse of what a day inside one of the nation's largest rimfire ammunition producers actually looks like. Copper plating of projectiles These guys are running Speer Gold Dot Ammunition, which still has a lot of human involvement and QC processes as part of its manufacturing. CCI Standard Velocity is getting its paraffin wax coating applied in this photo This employee is hand-checking boxes of Speer Gold Dot ammunition The 75th Anniversary CelebrationIf the tour was the technical, education-driven half of the trip, the anniversary party the following evening was pure, unfiltered community celebration. This wasn't some stiff corporate gala like I would have expected from one of the largest ammunition manufacturers in the world. Instead, and to my pleasant surprise, it was a large picnic-style get-together, complete with a special fly-by from some local pilots, catered food, lots of drinks, yard games, a swarm drone show, a long list of giveaways, and a live band that capped off the night with a tongue-in-cheek cover of Drowning Pool’s Bodies. All of this was planned months in advance and exclusively held for CCI employees, the businesses that support them locally, and members of the Lewiston community at large. So when I say it was truly an honor to be there, I really mean it. And before you mention it, I’ll apologize for my lack of photos from the event, since I was having such a good time. It says something about a company's culture when the 75th anniversary party feels less like a marketing event and more like a small town coming together to celebrate one of its own. And in a very real sense, that's exactly what it was. CCI isn't just a major employer in Lewiston; it's woven into the identity of the place, and that showed in how many people turned out and how genuinely happy they were to be there. One of the highlights of the evening, for me personally, was getting to spend time with Dave, better known to most of you as 22plinkster. Dave was there as an honored guest, which makes complete sense once you know his history with the brand. He's worked closely with CCI for years, and even has his own special edition CCI Stinger loads, cleverly branded as "Stanger" ammunition, which, if you couldn’t put two and two together, is simply just a riff on Dave’s iconic (and very real) Tennessee accent. Plinkster is a good friend these days, and getting to swap stories with him over good food and a live band, all while surrounded by the people who actually build the ammunition we both shoot constantly on camera. Overall, it was a pretty surreal full-circle moment for me at this point in my “career,” and it also demonstrated to me that CCI really does care about its employees, even the retirees who often get their own special 50-round run of 22LR ammo after 20 years at the company. Final ThoughtsSeventy-five years is a long time for any company to stay not just relevant, but dominant, in an industry as competitive as ammunition manufacturing. CCI's existence today isn't an accident. It comes from a willingness to keep innovating, a deep well of manufacturing expertise built up over decades, and apparently, a culture that still values community even after growing into one of the largest rimfire producers in the country, which is a culture I wish more firearms companies had. Getting to see the operation up close, rather than just shooting the end product at the range here at home, gave me a new layer of appreciation for every box of CCI ammo I open from here on out. I’ve been there, I’ve met the people who sometimes hand-make my ammo, and that work deserves far more recognition than I think most of us give the people at CCI credit for. So from the bottom of my heart, here's to 75 years for CCI, and here's hoping I get invited back for the 100th! I’d like to extend a personal thanks to J.J. Reich of The Kinetic Group, and author of the great book “ Nuts About Black Walnuts,” for inviting me to the event and organizing the tour.