Adaptive Reuse of Quarries: Swimming, Climbing, and Filming

Like cats, many quarries have multiple lives, or at least continue to be used long after people have pulled out stone for buildings. My most recent reminder of this was an article in one of Seattle’s local newspapers. The story described how the Index quarry, which Swedish immigrant John Soderberg opened in 1904, had been purchased and protected by the local rock climbing community.

The Index granite, technically a granodiorite, was an important building material in Seattle in the early part of the twentieth century. Soderberg took advantage of the proximity of the Great Northern Railway tracks to ship the stone. It went primarily into curbs and foundations, including my favorite building in Seattle, Smith Tower, but like many a local stone, its luster soon faded, other stones came into the market, and quarry closed down by the mid 1930s. And then the quarry was forgotten until rock climbers discovered it as a great climbing area close to Puget Sound.

Hundreds of climbing routes were put up over the years, much on private land, as well as some in Forks of the Sky State Park. Luckily for the climbers, the private owner, as well as the state parks department, were supportive of the climbers but that support may not have lasted so the Washington Climbers Coalition decided to buy the climbing wall site. On August 25, they completed the purchase of the property and named it the Stimson Bullitt Climbing Reserve.

This is not the only adaptive reuse of abandoned quarries. While working on my book, Stories in Stone, I came across several similar sites. The great granite quarry of Quincy, supplier of stone for the Bunker Hill Monument and numerous structures on the east coast, is also a favorite urban climbing area.

Perhaps the most famous ex-quarry is the one that starred in the movie Breaking Away. After the quarry flooded, it became a popular swimming site. When Breaking Away came out, so many people sought out the quarry that the owners regretted that they ever let the filmmakers shoot there. Access to the quarry is now discouraged, prohibited, and forbidden.

Portland, Connecticut's fabulous brownstone quarry also flooded, initially when the nearby Connecticut River overflowed into 200-foot-deep hole. Later, a hurricane pushed water back into the quarry and closed it permanently. The property had been slated for development--the plan called for cutting a channel to the river and opening a marina--but then the real estate market crashed. The city of Portland bought the property in 1999 and it was designated a National Historic Landmark the following year. At present, the quarry and site have been opened for a variety of adventure activities, including snorkeling, mountain biking, and zip lines. I am not sure such use truly honors the people who worked the quarry and supplied stone for buildings from Boston to San Francisco but it is a creative use of the land.

P.S. Just got a short note from Dave Tucker at NW Geology Field Trips that reminded me of one other swimming pool quarry. Here is what Dave wrote: "The public pool in Tenino, WA, occupies the old quarry south of downtown. It is closed for the season now. Some water runs through a pipe above the quarry to form a waterfall into the pool. I talked with a local high school kid who was sneaking a smoke by the pool, he said it is ‘hundreds and hundreds of feet deep’. I thought he was just smoking tobacco, but after that comment, not so sure. Just east of the pool area is a stack of big sandstone blocks with splitting holes visible on the edges. All stacked up to form a maze and play area."

Mystery Solved: Bones found in Bridge

On August 19, 1969, a short article appeared in the New York Times about the solving of an 85-year-old fossil legend. The story began on October 20, 1884, when workers at a small quarry near Manchester, Connecticut, discovered fossils in several blocks of brownstone. Word of the bones soon reached legendary paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh, but before all of the fossil-rich blocks could be saved, several went into a bridge over Bigelow Brook in South Manchester. They remained there until the Connecticut highway department decided to replace the bridge, when Yale professor John Ostrom acquired the blocks and found the long lost fossils.

The bridge over Hop Creek at Bridge Street, now demolished. While stone for this bridge was being quarried at Buckland, dinosaurs were found." Photo by Sylvian Ofiara in The Manchester Evening Herald. Published in A New England Pattern by William E. Buckley, 1973. Used courtesy of Manchester Historical Society

The quarry, owned by Charles O. Wolcott, pulled stone out of the Portland Formation, a 200-million-old sandstone deposited into a rift valley on the eastern margin of North America. Out of quarries of this stone in other parts of the Connecticut River Valley came most of the brownstone used in New York City and Boston. The major quarry was in Portland, Connecticut, about 15 miles southwest of Manchester. A shopping mall now covers the Wolcott quarry.

According to Marsh’s notes, the block was “half as large as an ordinary dining table.” It supposedly contained the front end of a dinosaur that Marsh initially named Anchisaurus major, which he changed to Ammosaurus in 1891. He was able to name the dinosaur from the remains of the hind end that had been found in a block saved for him. Over the next few years two other dinosaur specimens came out of the same quarry. Marsh named them Anchisaurus colorus and A. solus, in 1891 and 1892, respectively. Both also were renamed later. A colorus became Yaleosaurus and A. solus became Ammosaurus solus.

The Times article reported that Ostrom spent two years surveying more than 60 bridges in the region and finally concluded with 95% certainty that the notorious block had gone into a bridge over Hop Brook. (A study by Peter Galton in 1976 noted that there had been some confusion in the records, which lead to the search.) When news reached Ostrom about the bridge’s soon-to-happen destruction, he contacted the highway crew, which readily agreed to allow Ostrom and a crew to examine some 400 sandstone blocks over a two-day-period. Local elementary school teacher Richard Sanders found the first bone, a rib. Shortly thereafter, laboratory technician Rebekah Smith noticed a larger bone, a femur.

Over the next few years Peter Galton conducted a detailed study (Postilla 169, 1976) of all of the prosauropods (now called basal sauropodomorphs) from North America, including the new bones found in the bridge blocks. He again revised the names of the dinosaurs collected from the Wolcott quarry. Now, just two species remained, what Galton called “the slender-footed Anchisaurus polyzelus” and the “broad footed Ammosaurus major.” The rib came from Ammosaurus but the femur could not be clearly identified.

Skelton of Ammosaurus major from Galton's 1976 study. Based on bones from Wolcott's quarry

Galton's study, however, did not end the confusion over the fossils from Wolcott's quarry. In the subsequent years, various paleontologists have debated which species the bones came from. Were there two species as Galton initially concluded, or one (A. major) as Paul Sereno (Special Papers in Palaeontology 77, 261-289) concluded in 2007 or one (A. polyzelus) as Adam Yates (Palaeontology 53:4, 739-752) concluded in 2010? Clearly the legendary bones still contain a bit of mystery.

Greystones: Chicago's Answer to Brownstones

Many people, including me, have written extensively about the classic brownstones of New York and Boston. Recently, I learned about a similar building style popular only in Chicago. Architects and historians call the buildings greystones. The term refers to structures built primarily between 1890 and 1915 and most often in the Chicago neighborhood of North Lawndale. A survey published in December 2005 for the Historic Chicago Greystone Initiative estimated 1,714 greystone buildings in North Lawndale.

North Lawndale has an incredibly rich social history. By 1930, only Warsaw and New York had more Jewish residents. Forty nine synagogues dotted the neighborhood. By 1960, however, African-Americans made up 91 percent of the population. As Charles Leeks of Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago wrote in The Chicago Greystone in Historic North Lawndale “If Lawndale’s Greystones could talk, they would tell us” of Golda Meir, Dinah Washington, Benny Goodman, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Clarence Darrow making a vibrant, dynamic neighborhood.

From: www.nhschicago.org/content/greystone.php

Like the brownstones of the east coast, Chicago’s greystones were two- or three-story, commonly 2 or 3 flats (though there could be up to 6), flat roofed, brick buildings with a façade of more fancy stone. There also were greystone mansions and one-story greystone “shoeboxes,” but not so many as to define a unified style. More then 93 percent have fewer than five residential units. Working class people of modest means, with some more affluent middle class folks, were the primary buyers and tenants. Some streets are entirely greystones flats, whereas others may contain just one or two greystones.

On the eastern seaboard, the stone embellishment was the 200-million-year old Portland Formation. Chicago builders, in contrast, took advantage of their proximity to the great limestone quarry region of Indiana and enhanced their brick with the 330-million-year old Salem Limestone. I won’t write more about these stones because I have covered them thoroughly in previous blog posts.

The survey found two stages of style. Initially between 1890 and 1905, primarily Romanesque buildings with rusticated limestone dominated. They featured arches and robust cornices. Next came a Neo-Classical look incorporating smooth limestone blocks, bay and Palladian windows, and columns. Throughout the era, many builders also built purely brick buildings in the same styles. Curiously the color of the brick changed from red to tawny.

From: www.greystonepreservationllc.com

Beginning in 2006, a consortium of groups banded together to form the Historic Chicago Greystone Initiative to preserve these wonderful buildings. Composed of community residents, non-profits, business, academic, and government partners, the Initiative promotes renovation and protection, through technical and financial assistance. They are doing vital and critical work. I wish them continued success.

Fire and Stone

The recent and tragic fires around Los Angeles have prompted me to write about the connection between fire and stone. Vitruvius was one of the first to consider the connection. In his landmark De Architectura, or The Ten Books of Architecture, written sometime between 31 and 27 BCE, he wrote of travertine blocks. “They cannot be safeguarded against fire. As soon as they make contact with it, they crack apart and fall to pieces.” Instead he recommended the use of tuff.

Like the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato, Vitruvius considered that matter consisted of unique combinations of the elements water, earth, air, and fire, which gave an object, such as a stone, unique properties. Too much air and fire, according to Vitruvius, made travertine susceptible to breaking at high temperatures. Modern scientists point to the unequal amounts of extension and contraction along internal crystallographic axes in calcite for travertine’s poor performance in fires. Geologist Marie Jackson has found that tuff survives fire better than travertine because of its porous texture, which allows tuff to expand when heated with far less fracturing than travertine.

The problems caused by fire often drove building practices. In 1680, the General Court in Boston passed a resolution requiring slate roofs, after a fire destroyed 80 buildings and 70 warehouses. Others fire led to cities such as Boston, Seattle, and New York passing laws stipulating that new buildings be built with stone or brick. And James Flood’s brownstone mansion was the only building on Nob Hill to survive the fires that followed the 1907 San Francisco earthquake.

Former James Flood mansion, Nob Hill, San Francisco

The argument has also been made that Chicago’s Great Fire of 1871 helped make the Salem Limestone the most commonly used building stone in the country. Historians and promoters of Salem Limestone have written that the “buildings that suffered least from the fire were of limestone.” Newspaper accounts from the time, however, report that during the fire, limestone “seemed as though [it] actually burned like wood.” Builders were so prejudiced against the local stone, most of which came from nearby Joliet and Lemont, that in the first 30 days after the fire, most ordered brick, from as far away as Philadelphia.

Chicago Auditorium by Sullivan and Adler (copyright from Boston College professor Jeffery Howe)

The true qualities of the Salem—durability, accessibility, and ease of cutting—ultimately proved superior. By the mid 1880s, architects such as the high-profile firm of Sullivan and Adler had begun to use Salem regularly, most prominently on their Chicago Auditorium, built in 1887. Others followed, demand grew, limestone-laden trains bore north, and Salem buildings spread across the Windy City. By the mid-1890s, the Salem limestone was being shipped across the country, en route to staking its “most popular” claim.

The Getty Center (copyright David Williams)

Two months ago, another fire in Los Angeles made it into the news. This one threatened the Getty Museum. If the fire had engulfed the buildings, they would have put Vitruvius to the test. Travertine, and in fact, travertine from the same quarries that supplied Rome in Vitruvius’ time, clads the Getty’s buildings. Fortunately, fire fighters contained the blaze and no stone was harmed. I also suspect that fire fighting has improved a bit in 2,000 years.

Brownstone Tombstones

Continuing my theme of tombstones, I would like to turn to a singular grave marker in Middletown, Connecticut, just across the border from the old brownstone quarries in Portland. I believe this may be the only tombstone with dinosaur tracks on it. It honors Joseph Barrett, an M.D., though judging from the stone, he was equally as proud to be a botanist and geologist. Who wouldn't?

Barrett was well known in the area for his passion for tracks. His obituary in the New York Times read "So deeply was he engaged in this work that he neglected his profession and became a monomaniac on the subject of bird tracks. He saw all manner of fossils in city walks which no other eyes were able to see, and in his peregrinations about the town would stop suddenly, look at a stone, bring out a sheet of wrapping paper and, laying it out on the walk, draw upon it whatever his fancy painted, write the place where the stone lay and date its discovery." Oh, to be able to see those drawings!

Barrett also regularly supplied tracks to Edward Hitchcock, who taught at Amherst College and is considered the father of ichnology. Hitchcock never could admit that dinosaurs made the tracks; birds were the track makers.

When Barrett died, according to brownstone historian Alison Guinness, the local quarries donated two slabs of stone. You can find the facts on the smooth face. You can also see how brownstone weathers, peeling off layer by layer like sunburned skin. The back side, though, is the face to explore. Several three-toed tracks can be seen crossing at angles to each other. The most obvious one is just to the left of center, next to a round white lichen. Another one is a few inches down and to left. They have been designated as Grallator formosus and Brontozoum sillimanicum.

The back side of Barrett's tombstone. Note the various tracks of three-toed dinosaurs.

The second slab, which the first sits on, has two tree casts. In addition, you can see where it says "The Testimony of the Rocks." This book, written by Scottish geologist Hugh Miller and published the year after his death in 1857, is a curious combination of anti-evolution but supportive of a great age for the Earth.

Together these two slabs are certainly a wonderful tombstone testimony to the passion of a man for the stone and the fossils he loved.

"The Most Hideous Stone Ever Quarried"

As I noted in my previous blog posting about Stories in Stone, when my wife and I moved to Boston in 1996 from Utah, I went into rock withdrawal. So, like a good geologist should do, I began to seek out nearby rocks in the local buildings. One of my favorites was Harvard Hall on the Harvard campus.

Built in 1766, Harvard Hall is a stately Georgian structure that sits on a base of brownstone. I distinctly remember walking up to the building to look at the stone, which had succumbed to weathering. Making sure that no one was looking, I stroked the crumbling rock. Sand grains accumulated in my hand. They immediately transported me back to my beloved Utah.

Another use of brownstone, which shows how it can erode over time.

Although I had looked at brownstones for months it wasn’t until the sand grains of Harvard Hall nestled in my hand that I made the connection: what I had known as red rock in Utah, easterners called brownstone. Both are sandstone colored by iron, which in an oxygen-rich environment rusts and coats individual sand grains like the skin of an apple.

Used extensively in rowhouses in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, brownstone made these buildings elegant, yet simple, and with an air of permanence. They exemplify the density of urban life. Famous brownstone denizens have included Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie, and Holly Golightly, from Breakfast at Tiffany's, as well as real people such as Edith Wharton and Edger Allen Poe.

Quarries near Portland, Connecticut, are the birthplace for brownstone. The stone’s popularity grew throughout the middle 1800s and peaked in the early 1890s though not everyone appreciated the somber colored stone. Edith Wharton referred to its popularity as a "universal chocolate-coloured coating of the most hideous stone ever quarried."

By the late 1890s, the clamor for brownstone was over, driven primarily by a fatal problem; water and salt could penetrate its layers. When water freezes it expands nine percent. Salt has a similar property but instead of expanding it grows. Both processes can wreak havoc on a building block.

The former Portland, CT quarries, now flooded.

Quarrying for brownstone ended in the 1920s. In 1993, however, an ex-coal miner named Mike Meehan opened a small quarry on a ledge north of the original quarries. He knew nothing about quarrying brownstone. “Being a coal miner, I was more adept at blowing things up,” says Meehan. “But at the end of the day, I knew I wanted to be small scale and to be making a product.”

Meehan’s first contract was for a restoration project at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. Institutions have continued to order his stone, which he has sent to Brown University, Yale, and Pratt Institute. In recent years, after acquiring his own milling saw, he has been providing detail pieces, such as steps and lintels, for more and more high end homes, including one in Brooklyn, which I visited.

Meehan's restoration in Brooklyn

Meehan cut the new blocks to emphasize the bedding planes of the Portland rock. Each block is different with a variation in grain size, color, and bed thickness. They have a warmth and substantial nature to them, unlike the adjacent restorations, which obtain their look with stucco.

As I sat across the street from Meehan’s brownstones, I was reminded of a comment he made at the quarry. “One hundred years from now when people see these buildings they will say ‘That’s a glorious building.’ That’s a good thing to me.”

Building Stone Census of 1880

Every ten years the federal government conducts a census of the people. Census takers spread across the country ferreting out the vital statistics of America. For the 1880 census, the government also took stock of building stones and the quarry industry. I was recently lucky enough to acquire a copy of the 410-page report. (It came to me because my brother-in-law bought a bar in Arizona, which had the book in it, and his seven-year-old son was kind enough, with a bit of coercing, to give me the tome.)

As one might expect of a census, the book provides a minutia of facts. For example, 1,525 quarries operated and generated 115,380,133 cubic feet of stone, roughly enough to build one and a half Great Pyramids. Or you can learn that a David Williams owned a slate quarry in Slatington, Pennsylvania. The quarry was in Lower Silurian beds, produced black slate for roofing and school slates, and opened in 1864. Sounds like an industrious fellow.

Of more interest is the section that describes the building stones used in 137 cities, ranging from Akron, Ohio to Zanesville, Ohio. The listings reveal the classic story of most cities and towns, which generally use local stone, if available. Some people also import outside rock, most often for monumental buildings such as banks or churches. The story changes slightly in the bigger cities of Boston and New York, which still use local rock but also pull in stone from around the world. For example, exotic marbles came from Italy, France, Portugal, Switzerland, Spain, and Germany. That being said, 80 percent of the stone fronted houses in New York City used brownstone, most likely quarried in either Connecticut or New Jersey.

A hornblende granite from Grindstone Island in New York, some of which was used as paving material in Chicago

Reading through the census book, I am reminded of other books like this. These are the older scientific books that seemingly attempt to put in everything known about a subject. They are clearly labors of love of the writer and detail not just the science but also the history of a subject, such as the origin of a name of a species or who first used a particular building stone. In delving so deeply into the finer points, the authors make their subjects so interesting that the reader cannot help but take a deeper interest.

A channeler, used to cut stone into blocks in the quarry

Perhaps that is why my new book from 1880 survived its long life at a small bar in the middle of nowhere Arizona. I like to imagine that the drinkers of yore gathered around the book late into the evening and regaled each other with the many fine facts. I am sure they were better people because of what they learned.

Our Nation's Building Stones

So you’re heading out to Washington D.C. to attend the inauguration and wondering what to do in the down time between the Bruce Springsteen concert, primping for the Inaugural Ball, and chatting up your local congressional representative on the importance of  a good geology education.  Well, like that self-professed geogeek, Mr. Obama, (okay I think he just called himself a geek but I am guessing that he secretly likes rocks), one thing to do is to explore our nation’s capital and check out the building stone.  

In a city of stately buildings, stone has long been the premium material.  One of the first was quarried about 40 miles south of Washington along Aquia Creek in Stafford County, Virginia.  Popular between 1790 and 1840, the Lower Cretaceous sandstone is rich in quartz sand and pebbles.  It was also known as ‘Virginia freestone,’ and was used for the White House, Treasury Building, the Old Patent Office, and the older parts of the Capitol.  Unfortunately, the Aquia Creek rock suffered from many flaws and weathered poorly, so that it soon had to be replaced or painted over.  

Gateposts (From USGS Pub. Building Stones of Our Nation's Capital) 

You can still find it indoors at the Old Patent Office and in rooms next to the Capitol rotunda.  Outdoor examples include the Old Patent Office, the boundary stones of D.C., and three gateposts and one gatehouse, formerly at the Capitol.  They can now be found at 15^th St. NW and Constitution Ave. NW. 

The most popular building material, and one that has weathered far better, is the Salem Limestone.  As I have noted before, it is a 330-million-year old rock quarried in and around Bloomington, Indiana.  You cannot travel very far in Washington without running into a building made either all or partly of Salem.  These include the Botanic Gardens, the GSA Building, US Holocaust Museum, Interior, Jefferson Memorial (calcite from the Salem and marble have weathered and made stalactites and stalagmites in the basement), Lincoln Memorial, National Theater, and scores of more.  

Department of Interior (From USGS Pub. Building Stones of Our Nation's Capital) 

You can also find a brownstone, from quarries located along the Potomac River, near Seneca, Maryland, 20 miles northwest of Washington.  Like the brownstones of Connecticut, the Seneca sandstone formed in massive rift basins that opened 200 million years ago during the breakup of Pangaea.  The Smithsonian Castle completed in 1855, uses this brownstone, which has weathered to dark red from its original lilac gray.  I recently learned from Through the Sandglass of a great Mark Twain quote about said stone.  In a letter published in the March 7, 1868 Territorial Enterprise, he wrote of the “poor, decrepit, bald-headed, played-out, antediluvian Old Red Sandstone formation which they call the Smithsonian Institute.” 

Smithsonian Castle (From USGS Pub. Building Stones of Our Nation's Capital) 

I will end my short tour with the Washington Monument, the tallest masonry structure in the world.  The lower 152 feet use Texas marble, quarried in Maryland.  Construction on this section ran from 1845 to 1854.  Not until 11 years after the Civil War did building again begin again, now with marble from Lee, Massachusetts.  Only four layers were laid; this marble was too expensive.  Builders returned again to Maryland quarries but this time they got stone from Cockeysville, north of Baltimore. 

If you want to see more or learn more about stone of Washington, D.C., you can consult two excellent publications.  The USGS has put their Building Stones of Our Nation’s Capital on line. 

The second is the Building Stones and Geomorphology of Washington, D.C., written by Jim O’Connor, the late geologist for the District of Columia.  Enthusiastic about making geology accessible to everyone, he wrote and taught extensively about the local geology of the capitol. 

The Comstock King and Brownstone

“San Francisco’s crown in the matter of private architecture has rested on the brow of the city’s famous Nob Hill for the past 10 years but the brightest jewel in the setting is receiving its finishing polish,” appeared on page 4 of the May 9, 1886 New York Times.  The short article was referring to the mansion of James C. Flood, best known as one of the Nevada Comstock Kings.  His home was reportedly the most expensive private residence in America.  The reason was understandable—Flood’s 42-room estate was made of sandstone shipped around Cape Horn from Connecticut.  Total cost was $1.5 million and included a $30,000 bronze fence, which was rumored to be polished by a man whose sole job was to do so. 

Flood chose the red sandstone, better known as brownstone, because it was the stone of the wealthy.  William Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, and George Pullman all lived in brownstone homes, and brownstone was called an “almost proverbial synonym for all that is elegant and desirable.”  Tons and tons of brownstone was shipped as ballast around Cape Horn.  The 107 foot by 127 foot edifice featured 14 solid stone columns, 13 feet tall by 22 inches square, and 23-foot-long sandstone steps.  The biggest blocks each weighed 18 tons.

I have long wanted to see Mr. Flood's brownstone.  Skipping out on a few sessions at AGU allowed me to reach this goal. The mansion is rather handsome and very out of place on its block surrounded by gargantuan and mostly granite buildings.  And it is clear that no one has polished the bronze fence in decades. 

The main brownstone quarries were in Portland, Connecticut.  First used for building in the 1650s, brownstone started to spread widely in the late 1700s and reached a peak by the last decade of the 19^th century.  Following devastating floods, the quarries shut down around 1936, but not before the removal of 10 million cubic yards of rock. 

From a geologic point of view, brownstone has long attracted attention.  The red sands were part of an extensive series of sediments deposited in rift basins formed 200 million years ago by the separation of North America and Africa and the incipient opening of the Atlantic Ocean.  These sediments record more than 35 million years of time and stretch from South Carolina to Newfoundland.  The sediments also preserved the tracks of thousands of dinosaurs that roamed the wet sands near streams and lakes in the basins.  More than 20,000 of these tracks, including the legendary Noah’s Raven, are now displayed at the Amherst Museum of Natural History. 

James Flood’s residence was the lone mansion on Nob Hill to survive the 1906 earthquake.  It was, however, only a shell as fire had burned out the interior.  Flood had died in 1889 and his daughter sold the gutted building to the Pacific Union Club.  They hired the architectural firm run by Daniel Burnham to redesign the mansion.  Ironically, Burnham was the architect of the World’s Columbian Exposition and its White City, which contributed to white stone replacing brownstone as a favored building material.  The Flood residence is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  Only members and their guests are allowed in the building now.

 

Gary Cooper and the Stones of San Francisco

With the upcoming AGU annual fall meeting, I want to look at some of the building stone used in San Francisco.  Despite the area's abundant stone, the earliest fireproof granite building used stone quarried, cut, and fitted together in China.  Known as the Parrott Block, it was built in 1852.  The blocks had been labeled with Chinese characters and shipped to San Francisco, to be assembled by Chinese workers.  The three-story building survived the 1906 earthquake and fire but was razed in 1926 for the Financial Center Building, now remodeled as the Omni Hotel. 

Various rock trickled into San Francisco in the following decades. By the end of the century two of the most prominent were a sandstone quarried near Sites and a granite from Raymond.  Sites is about 100 miles north of the bay area, in the Sacramento Valley, whereas Raymond is 150 southeast in the foothills of the Sierras.  Both rocks reached the city by train. 

Colusa sandstone quarry - From: http://quarriesandbeyond.org/states/ca/quarry_photo/ca-colusa_photos.html

Two quarries in Sites provided stone.  A. D. Knowles opened his quarry in 1886, followed in 1890 by the John McGilvray Stone Company.  Known in the trade as Colusa Sandstone (the town of Colusa is about 25 miles away), the rock comes from the Upper Cretaceous Venado Formation, a several-hundred meter thick layer of submarine fan deposits.  They are part of the Great Valley Group, tens of thousands of feet of muds, silts, and sands that accumulated in a forearc basin found between the Sierra Nevada magmatic arc and the Franciscan subduction complex. 

The Ferry Building was the first great structure made of Colusa rock.  Other well-known buildings are the St. Francis Hotel, Music Temple in Golden Gate, and the Flood Building.  The stone was also shipped to Hawaii.  It is generally bluish gray or buff, though a recently opened quarry about one mile north of the original quarries markets the sandstone as a brownstone.  Like other sandstones during fires, the Sites rock spalled heavily during the post-1906 earthquake infernos. 

Raymond Granite Quarry - 1905 -- From: http://www.sjvls.org/photoheritage

The Raymond granite quarry opened in 1888 on property locally known at the time as Dusy’s Rock Pile.  Light gray in color, the Raymond rock is classic, Sierra Nevada subduction zone granite, and is now sold as Sierra White by the quarry’s present owner Cold Spring Granite.  Raymond granite was used in the San Francisco Civic Center, City Hall, Palace Hotel, and numerous buildings on the UC Berkeley campus.  The new main San Francisco library, built in 1996, also has a granite façade from the Raymond quarry. 

The stone, or at least the quarries, achieved a bit of notoreity in 1949 in the movie adaptation of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.  At a low point in his career, architect Howard Roark, played by Gary Cooper, retreats to a job in a quarry.  The quarry in the book is in Connecticut, but since the film was shot in California the Raymond quarries had to stand in for Connecticut.  Although limited, the scenes in the quarry with Cooper and Patricia Neal are some of the movie’s most famous and controversial because of their sexual imagery.  And for those inclined to stone, the shots do a fine job of depicting quarry technology.

Geology of War

"The whole battle is about trying to take an igneous intrusion away from another army," says Robert Whisonant, a geologist at Radford University in Virginia.  Whisonant is quoted in Erin Wayman's fascinating article about geology and the Civil War, which appears in the November issue of Earth magazine (formerly Geotimes.)

Wayman focuses on two of the most important battles in the war: Antietam and Gettysburg. Whisonant and his fellow researcher, Judy Ehlen, observe that one of the deadliest battlefields at Antietam was the Cornfield, where three times more solders died than at the adjacent Burnside Bridge.  They attribute the totals in part to the Cornfield's underlying limestone, which has weathered flat, whereas the more resistant dolomite and shale of Burnside had eroded into a safer terrain of hills and ridges, allowing soldiers to hide and maneuver unseen.

Whisonant's quote refers to Gettysburg where a diabase (dark igneous rock) had intruded into softer sediments and formed a boulder-rich, hilly terrain.  The Union army held the 25-meter-high Cemetery Ridge and the Confederates were on the lower Seminary Ridge. Between the two was a plain, formed by the erosion of the soft sediments.  More than 12,000 Confederate soldiers died when they tried to cross the unprotected plain during the infamous Pickett's Charge. With that loss the South retreated.

For me, the other interesting story of Gettysburg is the stone itself.  The battle-influencing diabase formed around 200 million years ago, as North America and Africa separated during the breakup of Pangaea. The split produced a series of rift valleys that stretch up the Atlantic Coast, including one now found in Connecticut and Massachusetts where dinosaurs left behind thousands of tracks. Collected in the middle 1800s by Edward Hitchcock, the tracks can be seen at the Amherst College Museum of Natural History.  The area is also famous for producing a brown sandstone used in the building trade throughout the east.  The rock is better known as the material covering hundreds of brownstone rowhouses. 

If you are interested in more information, the Pennsylvania Geological Survey has two publications on line. The first is a reprint of a 1962 report on Gettysburg and the second is 2008 field guide to the battlefield. The National Humanities Council also has a great reference spot with more articles by Whisonant. 

General Robert E. Lee may have been a brilliant tactician but he appears to not have been a good geologist. But in his defense, geology was still a young science and most of what we know now could not have even been imagined in the 1860s.