Cultured Stone products originated in 1962 when brothers Garrett and Floyd Brown of Vallejo, California saw the need for a new kind of building material. The entrepreneurial pair of plasterers developed manufactured stone veneer-a concrete mixture cast in flexible molds and hand-colored with iron oxide pigments to resemble natural stone. Made of lightweight aggregate materials, the veneers were approximately one-quarter the weight of natural stone and easily adhered to most wall surfaces.