Quarry - 'Rock Hole'

On the western side of Olympia Mill Village, a huge granite quarry locally known as "The Rock Hole" was first worked in the 1880s before the mills were built. For 135 years, granite from the quarry has been used to build roads, airport runways, and for other purposes. The quarry strongly influenced life in the mill village, sometimes negatively through early blasting techniques that regularly shook the village and showered it with fine powdery dust, and sometimes positively by providing jobs and economic stability to hundreds of workers who considered themselves lucky to be out of the mills. Up until 1915, only a relatively small amount of material was quarried. In the early days, the plant was operated by steam and large amounts of manpower, with mules and slip pans moving the stone, and black powder and dynamite used to blast and loosen it. George Lott, Sr. organized Palmetto Quarries, which continued as a family business for fifty-five years and branched into concrete products in 1948. Lone Star Industries purchased all of Palmetto Quarries operations in 1969 and continued their expansion in the South. Over the years, more modern quarrying techniques were developed, but it was not until 2000, when Vulcan Materials acquired what had become Tarmac, that real progress was made in more precise and less invasive blasting techniques. Methods were also developed to contain dust from blasting, and village residents embraced this more community-friendly relationship as Vulcan supported local projects including Olympia Fest, the Olympia Cemetery Association, and the Olympia Mill Village Museum.

Olympia, South Carolina · United States