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."

Quincy - The Granite City in the Globe

The Boston Globe ran two stories today about the town of Quincy (pronounced Quin-zee) and its granite-influenced past. For nearly two centuries, Quincy supplied granite to great and small buildings of Boston and beyond. These include the dry docks in Charlestown, Massachusetts, customhouses in New Orleans, Boston, and Mobile, Alabama, and the Bunker Hill Monument, a use which led to the first commercial railroad in the United States.

One story focuses on the efforts of locals to draw more attention to the importance of granite to a town once known as The Granite City. They hope to build a Quincy Quarry and Granite Workers Museum but despite a nearly two-decade old agreement to build it, they have had no luck. The story quotes Vic Campbell who said “It seems that when it comes to the Adamses, nothing that anyone can think of is too much. When it comes to the quarries, nothing is too neglectful.’’ As someone who has written about the beautiful and historical Quincy stone and its human and geologic history, I am sad to see that so many seem to not care about their past.

The second story, Of Granite, Plugs, and Feathers, tells the history of the quarries, tracing its earliest use to around 1754 and the King's Chapel, still standing in Boston. Stone was quarried not from the solid walls of rock but from boulders, which masons split by heating with fire and cracking with heavy iron balls. Not until around 1803 did a truly effective manner of quarrying come along. The plug and feather technique originated with a man known as Mr. Tarbox, who introduced the method of drilling holes in the rock and then putting a metal wedge, or plug, surrounded by two L-shaped shims, the feathers, into the hole. Hammering a row of plugs and feathers forced the stone to split apart. Tarbox's method dropped the price of split stone by 40 percent and helped launch Quincy's long history as a granite supplier.

Let's hope that these stories can help with the development of the Quincy museum. Perhaps it will also help with my push for a Slow Stone, my movement to encourage the use of locally quarried stone.

America's First Commercial Railroad - Quincy Granite

Architect/engineer named Solomon Willard arrived in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1825. Legend holds that he had walked 300 miles across New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts in search of the perfect granite for what would become his most famous building, the Bunker Hill Monument. Willard found that granite at a ledge in a wooded area.

It was a dark gray granite, which formed around 450 million years. Now known as the Quincy (pronounced Quin-ZEE) Granite, it is an unusual granite. Most granites contain two types of the mineral feldspar, broadly called plagioclase feldspar and alkali feldspar. In contrast, Quincy contains only alkali feldspar, a result of solidifying at a high temperature. Alkali feldspar gives the rock its characteristic green-tinted, dusky gray color. (One Quincy quarry owner called himself the “Extra Dark Man” because of the particularly dark stone excavated from his property.) Further darkening results from the Quincy’s nearly black quartz, as opposed to the more common clear or white varieties.

But back to Willard. The location of the granite presented a challenge. How would he move blocks that weighed up to 6 tons across the 12 miles of swamp, forest, and farms that separated Quincy from Charlestown, where the monument would be erected? Willard favored either a completely overland route or moving the stone in winter, when sledges could carry the blocks to the Neponset River, four miles north. A barge would transport the stone through Boston Harbor to Charlestown, which formed a peninsula on the north side of the Charles River, due north of downtown Boston.

Another engineer and associate of Willard’s, Gridley Bryant, however, suggested that a railroad would be more efficient. With the support of Boston merchant and philanthropist, Thomas Perkins, Bryant ended up designing what would become the first, commercial railroad in the United states. Pulled by horses, the railcar ran through a swamp and gently downhill to the river, where it ended at a 1,200-foot-long wharf, which took six months to build and cost two-thirds of the total $50,000 price of the railroad.

Bryant’s most innovative design was his rail car, fourteen feet long, eleven feet tall, and supported by six-and-one-half-foot high wheels. The empty car would back up to where the cut blocks were. Workers would turn gears on the car, which would lower a pallet supported by six chains. They would unhook the pallet, move the car forward, load a block or blocks, and back the car up again. One man could raise a six-ton block, which could be up to three feet wide and 32 inches high.

Scanned from the Quincy Historical Society newsletter, No. 26, Fall 1991

Bryant made the first test run of the railroad on October 7, 1826, on what became known as the Granite Railway. Workers loaded three cars with 16 tons of rock and a single horse pulled the entire load. Despite the railway's success, work didn't began on the monument till April 1827. It was finished in 1842. A formal dedication took place the following year, with 110 Revolutionary War veterans present, including 97-year-old Phineas Johnson, who had fought at Bunker Hill 68 years earlier. The cost to build the monument was $101,680, basically on budget.

Even before completion of the monument, its construction, as well as the development of the Granite Railway, led to granite finally becoming the preeminent building stone in Boston. Willard showed that large blocks could be used and transported, and by refining quarry techniques, he helped drive the price down by 75 percent. The popularity of the Quincy granite eventually led to 53 additional quarries opening around Quincy and gave the town its moniker, “The Granite City.”

A few remnants of the Granite Railway can still be at Willard's original quarry, as well as the Granite Rail Quarry. And the area is listed as a National Historic Place. Unfortunately, the great quarry was filled in several years ago with dirt from Boston's Big Dig.