Moment in Time (September 22, 2021)
There is a narrow belt of limestone called Columbus and Monroe (Devonian) limestone that runs from just south of Columbus north through Delaware and Marion to Lake Erie at Marblehead near Sandusky. In the early 1840s, efforts to mine the limestone from the ground from this belt in an area on the northwest side of Columbus along the Scioto River began in multiple small surface quarries owned by various families. Over the years, the quarries would be consolidated into larger productions that would ultimately result in the Marble Cliff Quarries Co.
From these early quarries in this rich stone deposit came the stone blocks, and crushed stone of various sizes, down to gravel and limestone powder, used in construction, farming and chemical processes. According to documents from the U.S. Geological Survey, the stone in the quarry cliffs on the west side of Columbus is known as the Columbus formation and is about 100 feet thick and is overlaid by a Delaware limestone deposit that is 16 to 35 feet thick. The upper half of the deposit is bluish gray in color in layers that are from a few inches to several feet thick and is prized as stone used for use in buildings and walls.
Photos from a 1906 report by the State Geologist from Ohio shows activity at the Casparis Quarry west of Marble Cliff. Clockwise from the top left is the crushing plant at the quarry, a locomotive moving stone to the crusher, the input rails where the coarse stone is moved into the crusher, and cars from the Hocking Valley Railroad being loaded with pulverized stone.
One of the major markets for limestone removed from the quarries near Grandview and Marble Cliff was for use as flux to purify iron ore. It came from the older, lower stratifications and was used in the furnaces to remove silica, phosphorus, sulfur, and other impurities from the iron ore as part of the steel making process. Eight hundred pounds of fluxing stone is used for each ton of steel. Giant steel mills in Canton, Pittsburgh, Ashland, Ky., and Wheeling and Weirton, W.V. were customers of these early quarries.
Railroad ballast, stone used to surface roads, first as gravel, then as macadamization and asphalt, and aggregates used in concrete also come from the stone deposits at Marble Cliff. Even the Columbus water system depended on the crushed stone in the early part of the 20th century. Thousands of tons of lime from the quarries were used to treat the water.
The quarries operating between 1840 and 1913 existed on land on both sides of the Scioto River purchased from William Sullivant to the south, and Col. Samuel Medary to the west. They included quarries run by Taylor and Bell (near what is now Tarpy Woods), Peter Burns and John Brown (adjacent to Trabue Road), M.D. Slyh, the Wilcox Bros., M.M. Williams, Price and Smith, George Frey, Linley and Poston, the Marling Co., and T.J. Price (below the hill at Marble Cliff).
The quarries were located adjacent to the river from the confluence of the Olentangy River north toward Dublin. The quarry sites included properties that are now developed as the new Grandview Crossing, north of Dublin Road (site of the old Grandview swimming hole), the Watermark mixed-use development between Dublin Road and the river, Hidden Lake Condominiums and the Runaway Bay and Quarry Apartments on both sides of Fifth Ave. near McKinley, Marble Cliff Commons, and luxury homes at Marble Cliff Crossing. Larrison Lake behind the former Arlington Arms Hotel is a former quarry and a sludge filled lake fills a former quarry just west of McKinley near the Shrum Mound. A new development and a Columbus Metro Park is just south of a working quarry north of Trabue Road between Dublin Road and the river. Quarries we’re also located east of Dublin Road near the old Aladdin Country Club and the current Scioto Country Club.
Timothy J. Price was born in Wales in 1810 and immigrated to the U.S. in 1829. He was listed as a carpenter in the 1843 Columbus directory and worked on the interior of the Statehouse. He established the T.J. Price quarry soon after, and later partnered with Thomas Stitt, who started a company to process the limestone into lime and plaster. In 1878 the company was the largest of its kind in Columbus and utilized over 4,000 cords of wood per year in its kiln to render 250,000 cubic feet of limestone into lime. Price also started a company that shipped flux and stone products from his quarry operation near Fifth Ave. and Dublin Rd. After his death in 1892, it was sold to his Arlington (Marble Cliff) neighbor, Sylvio Casparis. The Casparis quarry was expanded and mechanized and became one of the largest and most significant stone production operations in the U. S.
The present Marble Cliff Quarries Co. was founded in 1913, and the following year a consolidation of four companies operating in the area (Marble Cliff Quarry, Casparis Stone, Scioto Stone, or Kiefer Stone, and Woodruff and Pausch Stone) made up the new company. The consolidation was overseen by W.H. Hoagland of Claycraft Brick Co. who served as President and later as Chairman of the Board. Hoagland was also director of the Arrow Sand & Gravel Co. and Columbus Coated Fabrics company. Not long after the merger, John W. Kaufman was named President, and H.J. Kaufman Vice President. Various other members of the Kaufman family were involved in the management until it’s sale in 1985. The influential Kaufman family owned and operated this over 2,000-acre quarry operation, plus other mines and quarries in the United States and Canada.
An October 2, 1880 article in the Columbus Dispatch reported on the process of using explosives to dislodge the stone. Up to this point, the stone removal was dangerous and backbreaking work, with the stone loaded on horse-drawn wagons by men making less than $1 a day. The article indicated that Mr. Price raised the wage to $1.50 per day and offered free rent to the families of the workers, mostly Italian immigrants. The reporter also alluded to the use of railroad cars - 80 cars a week, each carrying 13-15 tons of stone, were dispatched. After Mr. Casparis took over the quarry, additional rails were installed and the quarry began using its own steam engines to move the cars. A tunnel under Trabue Road allowed the cars to be moved to a siding of the Pennsylvania railroad. A tunnel under Grandview Avenue near McKinley also allowed cars to be moved from the quarry there to the trains at the Grandview Yard.
Steam powered shovels were also used at the Marble Cliff Quarry. They also had multiple rock crushers to process the raw material. The rock crushers were large (some of the largest in the U.S.), noisy, and very dusty machines that took the large quarried rocks and turned them into uniform sized stone, gravel and powder. Quarry locomotives carried the raw material to the crushers and if the finished material was to be stored, rather than immediately loaded into railroad hopper cars for shipment, taken to the storage yard. A 1902 newspaper described a large fire that destroyed one of the quarry’s crushers and closed part of the operation. Other newspaper accounts documented many injuries and deaths due to the dangerous working environment.
Progress has changed the simple process of drilling and blasting limestone to a science. Now the drilling is done by machine, and chemistry and physical tests play a part in the final marketing of the stone. Science has also impacted the processing of the by-products of the flux stone. Large trucks and loaders have replaced the steam-operated machines, and the quarry railroad was discontinued in 1970.