Cement Quarry Caves

Sometime back in the 70s, I heard that the Marquette cement plant was going to blow the caves that had been made to quarry limestone in the days before heavy equipment made removing overburden easy. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

It might have been The Missourian’s story with a whole page of Fred Lynch photos on Page 6 that tipped me off. Here’s the link to the story about the caves. You’ll have to page back to see his pictures.

Pitched story to architectural magazine

I pitched the story idea to an architectural magazine. They wouldn’t give me an assignment, but they said they’d look at whatever I shot. I don’t recall if they eventually turned the story down or if I never got around to submitting it to them. I think it was the latter.

So, the Kodachrome slides spent 30-plus years in storage, where the color shifted slightly.

Edward Hely founded company in 1904

The Missourian’s story said that Edward Hely started the stone company in 1904; it bore his name until 1931, when it became the Federal Materials Co. The quarry was known as the Blue Hole because of the color of the water when it filled up.

Marquette Cement bought the property in 1976.

By the time Marquette Cement bought the property in 1976, the two quarries were separated by just about 100 feet, most of which was taken up by a network of caves. Federal Materials found it easier to dig horizontally to extract the limestone than to remove 35 to 50 feet of overburden – earth and lower grade stone – to get to the rock.

When the tunneling stopped, the quarry was about 375 feet deep. The pillars averaged 150 feet in height and were 35 to 45 feet in diameter.

Caves collapsed in 1981

In its May 17, 1981 edition, The Missourian pulled out all the stops to cover the collapse of the caves. Fred captured the action and reporter John Ramey wrote a first-person account of seeing a million tons of rock collapse on itself. The story said that crews spent two months drilling 850 blast holes and loading them with 600,000 pounds of dynamite. Some of the deepest 200-foot holes contained as much as 1,400 pounds of dynamite.

You could walk a long way

Present-day Buzzi Unicem plant manager Steve Leus was part of the team that handled the blast. When he gave me a tour of the plant and the quarry last fall, he said, “I was in the caves myself. It was massive. You could walk a long way before you came to the end of that cave.”

Columns were massive

“The columns were massive,” he continued. “They had to be to hold up that roof.”

They way they mined in those days, he explained, was “they drilled into the side of the limestone, then they blasted, then they mucked it out. Basically what they ended up doing was tunneling.”

You wouldn’t make that mistake twice

“They had a feel for what size column to leave to support the roof, and, if they didn’t, they didn’t make that mistake twice,” Leus said.

Some of the tunnels are under Sprigg

Leus pointed out some of the tunnels that extend under Sprigg Street. “We don’t know how far back they go,” he said. Present-day safety regulations make it complicated to enter what is considered a mine, so no one in recent history has explored the caves. (I’ll have pictures of those in the future.)

Seep water poured down sidewalls

Ground water would find its way into seams and leak down the walls of the quarry. Pumps would send it on its way through underground pipes until it made it back to the Mississippi River.

Quarry was about 375 feet deep

When Marquette Cement acquired the Federal Materials quarry, the deepest part was about 375 feet deep. Access to to the bottom was over rough, steep and curving haul roads.

Shafts of light and darkness

You were constantly moving into areas of shade and darkness when you drove along the haul road and through the caves.

Enough stone for another 10-15 years

Leus said there is enough stone in the quarry to last for another 10-15 years. They’re expanding to the north and west now since they’ve gone just about as deep as practical at this point.

A 1981 story estimated the reserves would last about 30 years, so either production has slowed or more rock is being extracted than predicted. The cement plant owns property near Scott City that could be mined in the future.

A place of beauty

There was something to shoot in every direction. This made me think of the grand canyon.

A shame to lose them

It was a shame to lose these beautiful features, but safety regulations would bar anyone from seeing them today, so it may be better that the stone was turned into the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge and roads and buildings in the region.

More photos to come

I’ll have more photos of the quarry and the cement plant taken last fall. Some of the photos from the 9th floor of the plant show spectacular views all the way to Academic Hall. The day was so clear that Crowley’s Ridge was visible in the distance.

 

 

Cement Plant Quarry Fills Up

Whenever I’m in Cape, I hop on my bike and take a run down to South Sprigg to look over the edge of the cement plant quarry. I’ve always been fascinated by the place.

I saw a brief story in The Missourian in the past couple of weeks that the high water and flooding has caused the quarry to fill up. I kept waiting for a longer piece and now I can’t find the original one.

In the meantime, my mother’s neighbor across the street, Bill Bolton, sent me this photo showing that the water is way above the conveyor belt that carries the blasted material over Sprigg St. to the cement plant.

Last week there was a story in the paper saying that huge sinkholes have opened up and swallowed so many pieces of Sprigg Street that it’s closed “indefinitely.”

2002 Blowout

To put Bill’s photo in perspective, there was a huge blowout in July 2002 where a 25-foot-tall plume of water came blasting in. You can click on any photo to make it larger.

Conveyor area still dry

Even with that massive inflow of water, the conveyor area was still high and dry.

By fall 2002, flow was stopped

By my October 2002 visit, the flow had stopped and pumps had taken the water level down substantially.

Nearly drained by October 2003

The water was almost completely gone by Oct. 15, 2003.

Fall 2010 aerial photo

This is what the quarry looked like from the air on Nov. 6, 2010. The paved road on the right is S. Sprigg Street.

Seep water from Cape LaCroix Creek

Nov. 10, 2010, I took a tour of the cement plant and was given my first trip to the bottom of the quarry since the mid-70s. I’ll run photos of that later, along with pictures of the massive caverns that were blasted out by the early miners.

Buzzi Unicem Plant Manager Steve Leus said the water in the photo was coming in underground from Cape LaCroix Creek. Under normal circumstances, pumps can handle the flow.

The caves on the right are from some of the early mining. They extend under Sprigg Street. Steve said they’re not sure how far back they go.

Water rising April 2011

The river was just reaching flood stage at Cape when I took this photo on April 17, 2011. The lower portions of the quarry are beginning to hold water, but it’s a long way from where it was when Bill took his photo a few weeks later.

1966 aerial shows expansion

This aerial I shot of the cement plant and quarry shows just how much rock has been taken out in the last 45 years.

 

Stone Wall on Park Drive

I’d like to know the history behind this stone wall running along the south side of Park Drive between Spanish and Fountain. It looks like it’s been there quite a few years.

This stretch of road was the scene of a traffic fatality Aug. 29, 1959, which broke a fatality-free record of almost two years. A car went out of control on the curve and overturned at 11:30 p.m. in the 300 block of Park Drive. A 14-year-old boy died of injuries sustained in the wreck.

You can read more about the crash here.

The Missourian story points out that Park Drive is also known as North Street. It said the scene of the accident was in the block between Fountain and Spanish “where the old city dump was located, almost directly across from the cliff on the top of which stands the home of O.G. Walker.” I’m assuming the dump was located where Missouri Park is today, just below Old Lorimier Cemetery.

Old retaining wall

If you look south from the stone wall, there is a steep hill with a concrete retaining wall about a third of the way up it.

N. Lorimier – W. Lorimier – Rivermont

From the top of the hill, there is a curious street layout. You get there by going north on North Lorimier until it deadends at the T-intersection of West Lorimier and Rivermont Drive. It’s not often the you run into an intersecting north and west street with the same name.

If you look over the hill on the Rivermont side of the intersection, you can see the crumbling remains of an old foundation. I don’t know if it was the O.G. Walker home mentioned in the news story or not.

Spectacular view – of old dump

What must have been a basement is becoming a catch-all for trash, brush and some small saplings. In its day, it must have had a fairly spectacular view – of the city dump.

It’s odd that there would be a city dump right below the Old Lorimier Cemetery. I wonder if it came before or after the dump that was located in Happy Hollow, south of Good Hope.

Does anyone know the history of the stone wall or anything about this building on Rivermont Drive?

Rev Up the Chainsaws

This was the “after” photo of one of my favorite pictures. You can see the “before” photo on my 2010 Earth Day page. It was taken in Athens, Ohio, but there will be plenty of opportunities to duplicate it along Bloomfield Road in the coming months.

150 trees to die

I haven’t heard from any of my readers who attended the meeting yet, but The Missourian had a Scott Moyers story about the Bloomfield Road public hearing posted before I went to bed.

City Engineer Kelly Green said the city has taken measures to minimize the loss of trees, but that some would have to come down to widen the road from 22 to 28 feet. “Some” is as many as 150.

Bottom line: the project will start in June and dozens of trees have already been marked for removal.

All about safety, city says

City officials, Moyers wrote, say widening Bloomfield is crucial for making safer a road that is the site of several accidents a year and even a occasional road fatality.

I didn’t do an exhaustive search, but I put “Bloomfield Road” into The Missourian’s search box. Not a single accident popped up. There were plenty of  Police Reports listing people who LIVED on Bloomfield Road who had been picked up for driving drunk or stealing things, but no accidents.

How does it compare to other roads?

I’m sure there are some. What I’d like to see is how Bloomfield Road’s accident rate compares to other streets with similar traffic volumes. What makes Bloomfield Road “crucial?”

I’m going to bet that if I HAD turned up accident reports, they wouldn’t have been “accidents.” I bet they would have been “crashes,” attributable to speeding or unsafe driving, things that can be prevented by law enforcement, not road widening. All road widening will do will be to increase speeds and traffic volume.

Roundabouts and other traffic calming devices constrict traffic to slow it down. Isn’t that what Bloomfield Road does naturally?

What do we do now?

It’s too late to save the section from the city to Benton Rd. That train has left the station.

Project Manager David Whitaker said that the next phase, which will take out what I think is the prettiest section – from Benton Road to White Oaks Lane – is starting with the concept that is similar to the work this summer, but that input from Thursday’s meeting could change the nature of the work in 2013.

Engineer Green said that nothing was set in stone for the next phase and they would compile the input from Thursday night’s meeting.

Here’s your civics class homework assignment

There’s your homework assignment: stay on top of the next phase. Make sure your input is “compiled” and not composted.

I’ll try to keep on eye on it, but I’m 1,100 miles away. You are the folks who live there and will have to show up for meetings.

Other road “improvement” stories

The Bloomfield Road spring

Mount Tabor Park at most scenic crossroad site in area

Mount Auburn Road started as a scenic drive

Snake Hill

Have we lost Bloomfield Road?