I found this amazing photograph of the Gottlieb and George Eyerman Quarry at 5100 Virginia Avenue. It seems to have been open from the late Nineteenth Century; wages were 25 cents an hour in the early Twentieth Century but it was “steady work,” according to job announcements. The Eyermans also owned a quarry on South…
Tag: Quarries
Historic Photographs of the Workhouse
It never ceases to amaze me that there was once a gigantic quarry along the riverfront just to the east of South Broadway, more or less where Interstate 55 now cuts through. It was the Workhouse Quarry, and for around a century inmates broke up rock for use in the roads around St. Louis just…
Former Klondike Silica Quarry
Heading out towards to Augusta, there is an amazing St. Charles County park that encompasses the old Klondike Sandstone or Silica Quarry. Originally owned by German immigrant Wilhelm Engelage, the property was purchased by the Tavern Rock Sand Company in 1898, which first had to blow off the top 85 feet of bedrock before the…
The Old Quarry on Utah Street
Things are not looking good for the houses built on the old quarry on Utah Street that I last looked at back in May of 2019 (second photo). I believe there has been additional demolition, and there has certainly been more abandonment. The houses are looking really bad as the settling has continued. It’s dramatic…
Former Clay Pits, Reifsnider State Forest
We spotted another Boone’s Lick monument driving out west. We’d looked at another in Dardenne Prairie back in January of 2016. Our destination, however, was Reifsnider State Forest, which encompasses former clay pit mines, which have now been filled with water and stocked with fish. It is interesting that there was a brick industry out…
Lost Weldon Spring, Part Three: A Quarry and A Cemetery
Heading north of Highway 94 in search of more cemeteries acquired by the federal government for the uranium processing grounds, we should have known taking the “Lost Valley Trail,” really an old farming road, was going to set ourselves up for an interesting day of exploration. First up, I noticed a break in the rocky…
Montmartre Cemetery
Across Paris in the Montmartre area is another cemetery, built in the basin of a former limestone quarry–a common theme where largely unbuildable land is used for the burial of the dead. It’s an interesting counterpoint to Père Lachaise; Montmartre Cemetery is still a rural cemetery movement space but it is more rigid and just…
The Old Marine Quarry
Just beyond the lanes of Interstate 55 but west of the South Riverfront are the remnants of a very old quarry, whose original purpose has been lost. It zigzags back and forth, and even appears in Pictorial St. Louis. I originally thought these cliffs were caused by prehistoric water erosion in this post from August…
Old Quarry, Town and Country
You never know what you’ll find down a quiet subdivision street in Town and Country. Passing down an old road in between squares of eighty acres of old farmland-turned-subdivisions, something doesn’t look normal. An old aerial photograph from 1955 reveals that there was a quarry active since at least 1937, and it was still visible…
Fruin-Bambrick Quarry
I never got a chance to photograph them, but there used to be a row of one story buildings that lined the west side of Grand Boulevard just south of the viaduct over the railroad tracks, just north of the intersection with Chouteau Avenue where this vacant lot now lies. Little did I know that…