Quarrying

Stone was quarried on a small scale on the Marblehead Peninsula before the first commercial quarry opened in 1834. The Marblehead Lighthouse and Keeper's House were built in 1821-22 of local limestone, and although it is not certain that the stone came from this small quarry, that would have been logical in an area with few roads. This quarry is probably typical of those that began operating on the peninsula in the first decades of the 19th century, though its exact history is uncertain because no state quarry records or regulating laws existed before the late 1840s. Before heavy equipment and high explosives, quarrying depended largely on manual labor, with hammers, pickaxes, and shovels used for excavation, fire used to crack stone, and steel wedges and hammers used where natural cracks and fissures were present. During the mid-19th century, many small and medium-sized quarries operated in the Marblehead and Kelleys Island region. The Kelleys Island Lime and Transport Company began buying and consolidating these independent operations, and by 1886 it was the largest quarry operator on the peninsula. In 1891 it purchased and expanded the Lakeside and Marblehead Railroad to serve its quarry operations. Some limestone from the Marblehead and Kelleys Island quarries approached or surpassed 90 percent calcium carbonate, making it highly valued for chemical uses in steel and glass making. Much of the stone today is used for construction, cement aggregates, and highway construction. The Marblehead Quarry was sold by the Kelleys Island Lime and Transport Company in 1955 to Chemstone Corporation, then to Standard Slag Company in 1962, and finally to Lafarge Holcim in 1989, which still operates the quarry.

Marblehead, Ohio · United States