CCI: How a Lewiston, Idaho Primer Shop Became a Rimfire Giant

A machinist leaves Seattle

The story starts with a man who knew how to make things out of metal.

Richard "Dick" Speer, born in 1915, worked as a machinist at Boeing's Seattle plant. His brother Vernon had gone into the bullet business, founding the company that still carries the Speer name. Just after World War II, Dick left Seattle and joined Vernon in Lewiston, Idaho, a river town where the Snake and the Clearwater meet.

According to American Rifleman's 75th-anniversary history, Dick first worked in a small room at the Speer plant, making specialized cartridge cases with an impact-extrusion process. It was clever work. It was also, at that moment, a bad business.

The brass problem

Postwar America had a brass shortage. Good cartridge cases need good brass, and there wasn't enough of it to go around at a price a small startup could pay. So the company did what small companies do when the plan doesn't work. It changed the plan.

Primers were in short supply too, and primers didn't need much brass. The company switched to making them. Its first shipment, both American Hunter and Wikipedia note, filled a military contract using the older chlorate FA-70 formula. That kind of primer works, but older chlorate formulas are known for leaving corrosive salts in a gun's bore.

The move that set CCI's direction came next. The company shifted to non-corrosive, non-mercuric primers for sporting use. Hand loaders across the country had been scrambling for primers. Now they had a steady supply. Wikipedia calls CCI the first reliable supplier of primers for hobby reloaders.

The chicken coop

The plant itself has the kind of origin that sounds made up. The company bought a small former chicken ranch next to the Lewiston Gun Club. The farmhouse became the office and warehouse. Manufacturing started in a renovated chicken coop.

Later, when the gun club moved, CCI bought that land too. The plant's footprint today sits on that combined site. Modern labs and factory buildings now stand where the hens used to.

After two name changes and a partnership with Arvid Nelson, the company settled on the name it still uses: Cascade Cartridge, Inc. CCI marks 1951 as its founding year, though American Rifleman notes the Speer brothers' Idaho venture began a few years earlier.

1962: the Mini-Mag

Primers paid the bills. Rimfire made the brand famous.

In 1962 CCI introduced the Mini-Mag. American Hunter's anniversary history calls it the first high-velocity .22 Long Rifle load, though that "first" depends on how you define high velocity, since faster smokeless .22 LR loads already existed. What isn't in doubt is that it was CCI's rimfire debut and became its signature. CCI's own product page still calls it "our original offering, and it's still one of our most popular." Today CCI lists the 40-grain copper-plated round nose at 1,235 fps.

The Mini-Mag's appeal was simple: a full-weight .22 LR bullet, pushed to the top of the normal speed range, made with CCI's own priming and brass. CCI's pitch then and now is reliable feeding and clean-burning powder, which is why it became a default small-game and all-round .22 for so many shooters.

1975: the Stinger

Then CCI did something the .22 Long Rifle hadn't seen. In 1975 its engineers completed a load fast enough to be called hyper-velocity. American Hunter puts the original speed at about 1,685 fps with a 32-grain plated bullet. CCI's current page lists Stinger at 1,640 fps.

The trick was the case. Stinger used a slightly longer case than a standard .22 LR, .702 inch against .613 inch per American Hunter, to fit more powder behind a lighter bullet. That's why CCI still tells you to use Stinger only in guns with standard sporting chambers, and why some rifle makers warn against it in target chambers.

Other makers now offer their own hyper-velocity .22s. Stinger is the name that stuck, and it remains in CCI's catalog today. If you're curious how fast .22s behave in semi-autos, our guide to semi-auto .22 jams covers why ammo choice matters.

Blazer, magnums and the .17

The next decades filled in the catalog. Wikipedia notes that "Blazer"-branded rimfire ammo appeared in reports around 1972, and that the Blazer line officially launched in 1981. Blazer went on to become CCI's value brand for handgun ammunition, including aluminum-cased loads.

CCI also built out a magnum rimfire line. Its Maxi-Mag .22 WMR loads became as familiar to varmint hunters as the Mini-Mag was to squirrel hunters. When Hornady introduced the .17 HMR in 2002, working with Marlin and Ruger, CCI followed with its own .17 HMR loads in 2003. In 2023 CCI marked 20 years of .17 HMR production. Today its .17 HMR range includes V-Max, TNT, Gamepoint and FMJ loads, plus the A17 load built around the Savage A17 semi-auto.

The specialty loads kept coming: shotshells for snakes and rats, the Quiet-22 for backyard pest control, and Copper-22, a lead-free .22 LR covered in our Copper-22 guide.

New owners, same town

For decades CCI ran as what American Hunter calls a "family-influenced enterprise." Then the corporate shuffles began. By February 2015 CCI was part of Vista Outdoor, a spinoff of Alliant Techsystems, with roughly 1,100 employees at the time, per Wikipedia.

In 2024 Vista Outdoor's sporting products arm was rebranded The Kinetic Group and sold to the Czechoslovak Group, a large industrial company. Wikipedia dates the sale to November 2024. CCI now sits within The Kinetic Group's ammunition division, alongside Federal, Remington and Speer.

That brings the Speer story full circle in an odd way. The company Dick Speer founded beside his brother's bullet plant is now a sister brand to Speer itself, under one owner, still making ammo in Lewiston.

What 75 years looks like

CCI marks its 75th anniversary in 2026. The modern catalog shows how far the chicken coop has come:

• 2020: the MeatEater line of small-game loads, developed with Steven Rinella, including Copper-22, Mini-Mag and Maxi-Mag versions.
• 2023: Clean-22 Hyper Velocity, with a polymer coating to reduce lead fouling.
• Recent years: the .22 LR Uppercut, a hollow point designed for defensive use in handguns. American Rifleman notes CCI recommends barrels of four inches or longer for it.

Through all of it, the Lewiston plant has stayed the center of production, employing hundreds of people, according to American Rifleman.

Why CCI matters to rimfire shooters

It's easy to treat a brand history as trivia. But CCI's story explains why its boxes look the way they do.

A company that began in primers cares about ignition. Reliable priming is the part of a rimfire round most shooters never think about until a misfire. CCI's product pages still lead with "CCI priming and brass."

A company that built its name on the Mini-Mag and Stinger kept making speed and reliability the selling point. That's why so many semi-auto .22 owners reach for CCI when a gun is fussy.

And a company that stayed in one town for 75 years kept a kind of identity that survives changes in ownership. Whether that lasts under new owners is the next chapter. For now, the Mini-Mag is still on the shelf, still CCI's "original offering," more than sixty years after it first appeared.

You can find CCI's current .22 LR range on Ammunition Depot's 22 LR ammo page. Check current price and availability there.

Editorial note: This is an independent editorial overview built from manufacturer specifications, retailer listings and published sources. We have not performed hands-on testing of the products discussed, and nothing here is a performance guarantee. Verify specifications, compatibility and the law where you live.

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