Around 1856, James E. Yeatman, a wealthy businessman, built this lime kiln or oven to burn limestone rocks at temperatures of over 800°F and break them down into powdered lime for mortar used in constructing large stone houses in his subdivision around Glencoe. Made of native limestone block and lined with firebrick from St. Louis, the kiln was almost 20 feet square at the base and 40 feet tall, with expansion joints on all four sides so it could expand and contract during firing. It was built next to a hill so it could be loaded from above, with limestone hauled to the top and dumped in, while locally cut firewood was fed into the double arches on each side of the base. One cord of wood produced about 25 to 30 barrels of lime, and the kiln burned about seven cords of wood every 24 hours, operating continuously unless repairs were needed. Workers shoveled the hot powdered lime out through the front archway to cool. Lime was and still is used to make cement and mortar and to sweeten acid soils in crop fields. After 1868, several more kilns were built when the Cobb-Wright-Cass Mining Company purchased the land now called Rockwoods to quarry limestone on a larger scale, but none of those other kilns remain.
