USA > Michigan > Monroe County > History of Monroe County, Michigan : a narrative account of its historical progress, its people, and its principal interests Volume I > Part 37
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HISTORY OF MONROE COUNTY
reported to have been made by J. D. Pennock, chemist for the Solvay Company, Detroit :
Magnesium carbonate
45.01
Calcium carbonate 51.69
Silica . 3.45
Iron oxide and alumina .20
Calcium sulphate . 43
Difference
.78
100.00
Just west of the quarry, upon land belonging in 1900 to John Knaggs, (claim 428, North River Raisin,) there is an outcrop of the same strata upon the south side of the road. A quarry was opened at this place and rock removed to a depth of twelve feet for building purposes. Not hav- ing been operated for some time the small excavation is now filled with debris and there are exposed only the protruding upper layers. Over a considerable area about this outcrop rock can be struck with a three foot probe. A quarry similar to that of Robinson and Taylor might be here developed. Beneath each the Sylvania sandstone must be expected to be reached very soon, so that neither could be extended to any depth with a yield of dolomite. The main stratum of dolomite in these two quarries, bed I of the Woolmith quarry and the bed found to overlie the Sylvania at the Toll pits, are apparently identical.
Directly south of these two quarries, upon the opposite side of the river, Fritz Rath opened up two small quarries upon claim 685. The most northern is located some 250 paces northeast of the residence and consists of a rectangular opening, seventy by eighty-five feet. This was worked for lime about twenty years ago, the quality of which was re- ported to be good. At the time of the visit the quarry was filled with water but numerous fragments of the rock were found scattered about. These indicate that the beds are a dark brownish dolomite, streaked and finely specked with a creamy white, looking very much like a very ob- scure oolitic structure. Upon dissolving a flake of the rock in acid there is left behind a quantity of pure white rounded sand grains, varying con- siderably in size. These are secondarily enlarged against the rhombohe- drons of dolomite, and oolitic granules, as in the case of the Woolmith rock previously described, giving their surface a very rough appearance.
IDA QUARRIES
One and one-half miles west of the village of Ida the rock strata again appear at the surface owing to local flexures. Just where the north and south quarter section line of Sec. 4 intersects the Adrian branch of the Lake Shore railroad, three quarries have been opened. The principal one has been operated for lime and building stone for many years by Nelson Davis. This is located to the south of the railroad in a field of about eight acres, one mile east of the Ann Arbor railroad. Superficial excavations have been made over a considerable portion of the field. The beds have no perceptible dip within the limits of the quarry and are drained by a small stream flowing southeastward. Mr. Davis recognizes two separate beds which he terms the first and second forma- tions respectively. The uppermost attains a maximum thickness of seven to eight feet in the central portion of the quarry. Based upon excavations about the quarry. Mr. Davis believes that this bed gives out in each direction, from ten to fifteen rods north and east, about one-half mile west, and before it reaches Lulu, two and one-half miles to the
BED OF OTTAWA SINK [A Disappearing Lake]
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HISTORY OF MONROE COUNTY
southwest. It consists of a light gray dolomite which in places assumes a creamy white, owing to its partial or complete conversion into stron- tium carbonate (strontianite). Near the middle of the quarry nearly a foot of the dolomite has been so altered, giving a soft, mealy rock with seams and films of the pure mineral. Some slabs are covered with a layer of slender well formed, orthorhombic prisms of this strontianite. The bedding is thin, varying from an inch, or less, to six or seven inches. Near the surface of the bed certain slabs show a remarkable amount of what may best be described as gashing. The rock looks as though, when it was only very slightly plastic, it had been jabbed in every direction with a thin bladed, double edged knife point. The gashes are almost al- ways open, intersect one another irregularly and vary greatly in size, some being two-thirds of an inch long, while others can scarcely be seen without the magnifier. The cross section of each gash shows that it is thickest at the center and that it slopes gradually and symetrically to a very thin edge. Traces of this peculiar structure are found throughout the Monroe series, from the highest rock seen at Petersburg to the lowest outcropping at Stony Point. It is not known what mineral could have crystallized in the dolomitic matrix and left these openings by its re- moval. One specimen from the Raisin bed shows them filled with calcite, but this may represent a secondary deposition. In his report of 1860, Winchell refers to this as an acicular structure and characteristic of gypsum. Rominger used the term acicular also in describing the Ida rocks, and calls attention to the widespread character of the phenome- non, but does not name the substance by which it may have been pro- duced.
Underlying this bed is the so called "second formation," which is well exposed in some of the deeper excavations of the quarry. This a firm dolomite, dark when damp, but drying to a light grey. The surface of the bed is rough and irregular, and the upper three or four inches porous and open, containing numerous moulds and casts of gasteropods, bracheopods and corals. A silicious dolomite streaked with blue was found to overlie the bed of white sandrock, struck in the Nichols well. This latter appears to be six to seven feet thick, but contains much dolomitic matrix and extends twenty-four to thirty feet of depth.
LITTLE SINK QUARRY
A small but interesting quarry has been opened upon the eastern edge of what is known as the "Little Sink," to be later described. The excavation lies in the S. E. 1/4 S. E. 1/4 Sec. 2, Whiteford township, upon land owned by Morris Cummins. Over an area of ten to fifteen acres the rock lies very near the surface, so that the scanty soil is practically unfit for agricultural purposes. The rock in some places is entirely bare of soil, while in others its thickness varies from one to two feet. Upon the west side of the quarry there is practically no stripping, but this reaches a thickness of one to one and one-half feet upon the eastern side. In passing southwestward from Lulu the surface of the rock is depressed, covered with a heavy belt of sand, and next reappears here at the sur- face in consequence of having attained an elevation above sea level of about six hundred and seventy feet. The quarry is nearly equi-distant from the Ann Arbor Railroad and the Toledo-Adrian branch of the Lake Shore railroads, being above five miles from each in a direct line. In consequence the markets are entirely local, the demand being simply for building stone. The present quarry was opened about thirty-five years ago, but previously stone had been superficially quarried for build- ing purposes and for the manufacture of lime upon a small scale. The
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HISTORY OF MONROE COUNTY
opening is in the form of an irregular quadrilateral about one hundred by fifty feet, and the strata have been penetrated from nine to ten feet. The water enters the crevices of the rocks through which it drains away except in the early spring, when the entire region is liable to be flooded. Two fairly distinct beds may be recognized which overlie a pure white sand rock in which the grains are cemented by a dolomitic matrix. A comparison of these beds with those previously described shows that they are intermediate between the beds exposed in the Ida and Lulu quarries, being indeed those penetrated by the drill in the Davis quarry before the white sand rock was reached. The Lulu strata will then be exposed here by going deeper. The uppermost bed is thin-bedded and varies in thickness, within the limits of the quarry, from three to five and one- half feet. Typically it is compact, tough, gray dolomite, showing a rather bright greenish stain in places. Towards the surface it is fissured and weathered considerably, showing a rusty iron coloration. The rock is penetrated with numerous channels which seem to be the preserved burrows of marine annelids. Fossils are abundant at certain levels. The second bed is three and one-half feet thick and is a gray dolomite streaked horizontally with blue, as seen in the Lulu quarry. In the up- per foot of this bed these blue streaks are altered to a rusty brown, suggesting that the blue coloration is due to some oxidizable compound of iron. No fossils were observed in this bed except a faint trace of a cephalopod. A few cavities occur in which are found crystallized masses of calcite and strontianite. There also occur some peculiar stylolites in the form of sub-cylindrical plugs, in diameter ranging from one and one-half to eight inches and in length from one and one-half to seven inches. They are set vertically in the strata with their upper ends on a level with the surface of the rock. They separate quite readily from the rock in which they are embedded and show the peculiar splintery surface, which characterizes these structures. Occasionally one is seen which is well defined above, but which gradually merges into the rock of the stratum and its form disappears. The film of carbonaceous matter com- monly present is here represented by an iron stain, or by the blue color- ing matter with which the bed is streaked. These plugs have the same composition as the surrounding rock and on being broken show no in- ternal structure. The upper end of each is deeply concave and in every one observed there is a small handful of angular chips of dolomite loosely cemented together. The most plausible explanation seems to be that in the general disturbance of the region the rubbing of the strata over one another detached the small chips. Some of these collected in the cavities at the upper ends of the stylolitic plugs and were preserved, while those which remained between the strata were ground to powder. The struc- tures themselves strongly suggest an organic origin, but are believed to have been caused, in some unknown way, by pressure. A small sink and quarry occur upon the place of Daniel Rabideu at the S. W. 1/4 N. W. 1/4, Sec. 10. This lies about half way between the quarry just de- scribed and those to be described in the next paragraph. Only a small amount of stone has been removed. It is a horizontally streaked dolo- mite of a dark drab color, containing some minute calcite crystalliza- tions.
OTTAWA LAKE QUARRIES
These are located near the head of the lake in the east central part of Sec. 7 and the west central part of Sec. 8, Whiteford township. They represent one nearly continuous irregular excavation, but lie upon the adjoining properties of no less than half a dozen individuals. The gen- eral nature of the rock and its peculiar structure, as found in various
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HISTORY OF MONROE COUNTY
locations in Monroe county previously noted, which with fuller descrip- tions are believed to cover all the localities from which rock has been quarried from the Monroe series above the Sylvania. The dolomites found at Flat Rock, Gibralter and Grosse Isle belong to the same set lying between the Sylvania sandstone and the Dundee formation exposed at Trenton. An analysis of material obtained by a drill from these beds has been procured and follows :
Calcium carbonate 55.03 per cent.
Magnesium carbonate 42.17 per cent.
Iron oxide and alumnia 48 per cent.
Silica and other insoluble residue. 2.32 per cent
Following are brief descriptions of the quarries below the Sylvania sandstone :
NEWPORT QUARRIES
The fold in the dolomite layers which constitute the "ridge" passing from Sylvania northeast to Stony Point has brought the rock very near the surface in many places and a large number of small quarries have been opened upon it. Following the strike of the beds very closely, as does this fold, there is much sameness in the general appearance and composition of the rock exposed in the numerous openings. Towards the base of the Sylvania sandstone the dolomite becomes highly charged with rather coarse sand grains, as seen in the Smith quarry west of Newport, and in the rock removed from the bed of the Raisin. The deeper beds are more homogeneous and compact, of a light or dark drab color and are all true dolomites. Fossils in the form of moulds or casts occur in many places and will be treated in the last chapter of this report. The bed of oolite which has been previously traced and de- scribed, happens to occupy the crest of the ridge for a long distance and is much in evidence for a bed of such thickness. The most northern openings in this series may be conveniently grouped as the Newport quarries. The most important of these lies in the N. E. 1/4, S. E. 14, Sec. 1, Berlin (T. 6 S., R. 9 E.) just south of the village of Newport Center, upon the west side of the Michigan Central Railroad. The quarry consists of a roughly rectangular opening about two hundred by fifty feet. At the time of visit it was filled with water, so that its depth and the beds represented could not be satisfactorily determined. The rock is of a dark drab color, certain layers being charged with fossils, but all the calcium carbonate has been dissolved. A small crusher was operated for a time in connection with the quarry, but work has ceased and the building and machinery have been removed. In the village of Newport Center, from the Lake Shore Railroad bridge up Swan Creek for a distance of a quarter to a third of a mile, rock is readily reached in the stream and along the banks. Irregular openings have been made upon the places of Cartwright and Brancheau and rock removed for local building and construction work. Samples taken show that it is of the same character as that above noted. One and a half miles west, upon the land of Mrs. Lizzie Smith, there was opened about ten years ago a rectangular quarry eighty by one hundred feet, developing a rock not dissimilar to the average of Sylvania found in this part of the county.
THE FRENCHTOWN QUARRIES
The Frenchtown quarries lie in the southern part of this township near Monroe, where the ridge changes its northeasterly course rather
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HISTORY OF MONROE COUNTY
abruptly, swings around to the southeast and strikes Lake Erie at Stony Point and Point aux Peaux. In its course across the township it fur- nishes the sites for several quarries, the most northern of these being the one upon claim 529, south of Swan creek, formerly belonging to Mr. Sissung. There are said to be here one hundred and sixty acres of land over which the stripping will not average more than twenty-eight inches in thickness. The quarry was originally opened as an outcrop twenty- five years ago. Good building stone is obtained for the local market. Another larger opening lies upon the same claim to the southwest on the place of Richard Labeau, covering two hundred and fifty by one hundred and seventy-five feet. Following southwestward where Sand Creek crosses the ridge for a distance of three-fourths of a mile, rock can be struck with a probe and appears at frequent intervals in the bed of the stream, a tough compact rock of grayish drab color.
THE STONE BUSINESS OF MONROE
In speaking of the stone business, incidental mention may be made of the fact that before the war quarries of silica had been found on the "Bond farms" northwest of the city which upon crushing and washing was found to be superior quality and became much in demand by the glass factories at Martin's Ferry and Bellaire, Ohio, in the manufac- ture of glass. A crushing and washing plant was established at the docks, the stone was quarried, brought to Monroe by teams, crushed and washed and shipped during the summer by boat to Cleveland and in winter by cars direct to destination and for a number of years in the '60s and '70s this industry was of considerable prominence in the county. This was subject to the same trouble as the lime business, for four months in the year, two in the spring and two in the fall, mud roads made it impossible to get the rock from the pits to the crusher. Legal difficulties between the partners owning and operating the quarries, injunctions and law- suits put an end to the business in the '70s; but some twenty years later it was revived, a blank track from Detroit Southern Railroad was run to the Bond farm and the industry is now in a reasonably flourishing condition, being operated as the Monroe Silica Company.
From the decadence of the lime business in the early '70s of which no remains were left except an occasional burning at Ida for local purposes and a small kiln south of Monroe operated by a Mr. Gaffney the use of limestone was again restricted to building purposes until in the '90s; although an occasional far-sighted business man would advocate its use for road making and similar purposes ; and its use with Portland cement, then only imported into Michigan from the east, for foundation purposes. His words, however, generally fell on deaf ears.
The inception of the present flourishing stone business of the county was the idea of one Oliver B. Hawkins, who owned a farm south of Plum Creek along the railroads, south of the city of Monroe. A part of this farm lay between the tracks of the Michigan Southern and Canada South- ern, later the Michigan Central, about a mile south of the city.
Upon the tract of land Hawkins set up a small plant with a crusher with the idea of furnishing crushed stone for road-making purposes. The piece of ground was small and Mr. Hawkins unexpectedly found himself doing such a flourishing business that he was tempted to enlarge. He became associated with a Mr. Smith and the business grew rapidly. At the quarry south of the city the proximity of the creek as well as the presence of springs in the rock made them a great deal of trouble from water and diminished their profits. They began to look about for other locations and ultimately this quarry was abandoned, the machinery dis-
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HISTORY OF MONROE COUNTY
mantled and a tract of ground of the Detroit Southern, near Scofield, was acquired and a much bigger quarry put in operation. The business con- tinued to grow and finally attracted the attention of a number of the progressive business men of Monroe. They were moved to consider it by three reasons; first, the abundant supply of the stone; the opportunity to obtain labor, which was plenty in Monroe; and the facilities for ship- ments. After discussion of the question a corporation was formed, known as the Monroe Stone Company, and a tract of ten acres of land was leased north of the city adjoining the P. M. L. S. & M. S. and M. C. R. R., and a quarry was installed. The business was a success from the start, the company continued to develop until they had practically covered the ten acres which they leased from the P. M. and gone to as great a depth as they could properly quarry and elevate the stone. With a steadily increasing business the company purchased forty acres about a mile south of the city, removed their crushing plant thereto; added a sec- ond crusher of much greater capacity than the first and has continued to do a flourishing and profitable business. In 1911 this company as- signed its stock to members of the France Stone Company, a larger producer of. stone at various points in Ohio, managing some twenty enterprises and while retaining its corporate existence as the Monroe Stone Company has virtually become an integral part of the France enterprise.
When the Shore Line Railroad was in contemplation in order to ob- tain a needed supply of ballast, a quarry was opened along its line some two miles north of the city and in sight of, and overlying the same bed of rock as the original quarry of the Monroe Stone Company. This enterprise was incorporated, as The Shore Line Stone Company, with Messrs. Eckert and Peabody at its head and has been continuously operated from its inception to the present time, being now controlled by Messrs. Thornton Dixon and Frank Cairl.
In the meantime while the electric railway between Detroit and Toledo was being built another stone quarry was opened and crusher erected in the village of New Port, Berlin township. This was used al- most exclusively to furnish ballast for the electric line and never was a factor in the regular stone trade of the county. When the road was completed the crusher was dismantled and the pit allowed to fill with water. Moved by the possibilities of the crushed stone business Mr. Davis and some others under the title of the Ida Stone Company installed a crusher at the old lime quarries west of Ida and for some years and until the death of Mr. Davis did business at that point ; but the quarry is now abandoned.
The quarries of the Monroe Stone Company south of, and the Shore Line Stone Company north of the city are still growing year by year and the volume of their transactions is astonishing, considering the fact that the product is mined, crushed, screened, loaded into cars and shipped at prices ranging from fifteen to sixty cents per short ton. The discovery of marl beds in Michigan and the great production of hydraulic cement in the state and the immense growth of the use of crushed stone, sand, cement, and gravel in structural business and road-making business would seem to indicate that the business was yet only in its infancy and was destined to a largely increasing and profitable future. This has been the reason of the growth and success of the present quarries and augurs well for their future prosperity. Their present income is over $1,000 a day upon an average and when the price of the product is considered, some estimate of the volume of the business can be formed. The lime stone in the county is inexhaustible; the uses to which it may be put are increasing yearly; its quality is unsurpassed;
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HISTORY OF MONROE COUNTY
it has been found available not only for building purposes, and for road purposes, but also in the treatment of salt products and in the manufac- ture of iron; it is a chemical and a flux stone as well as building and road material; and in years to come chemistry and metallurgy will un- doubtedly furnish other uses for it. Meantime the operating quarries are yearly improving both their facilities and their means to economically produce the crude material and already the railroads to which they are tributary are finding it difficult to furnish sufficient cars to handle the output during the busy season. New machinery and new devices to more economically produce and handle the stone are being installed,-air com- pressors, donkey locomotives, steam shovels, mechanical self-acting drills, automatic pumps, screens of larger variety and the most modern crushers are being installed and the business, whose real inception was in the mind of a dreamy farmer less than a score of years ago, has now become one of the leading industries of the county.
MONROE STONE COMPANY
The most important quarry in the eastern part of the county is the one now being operated by the Monroe Stone Company. This is located in the southern part of Frenchtown, about two miles north of the city of Monroe, claim 64, North River Raisin. . It lies between the Lake Shore and Michigan Central tracks and is connected with the Pere Marquette by means of a switch, so that the shipping facilities are all that could be desired. The quarry was opened in September, 1895, since which time work has been actively pushed and an immense amount of rock crushed and marketed. The stripping averages about two and one-half feet vary- ing but little toward the east and west. Two hundred feet to the south it equals four feet in thickness, while one hundred feet north it equals three feet. The upper layer is glaciated above, as is uniformly the case in the county. For fourteen feet the rock is thin bedded, the strata varying in thickness from two inches at the top to ten inches below, and is shattered and broken so as to have no value for building purposes. It is a dark drab dolomite, of fine grain and even texture, breaking with rough conchoidal fracture and sharp edges. Thin, wavy carbonaceous films traverse the rock. Between the strata are layers of a soft putty- like clay which hardens upon exposure. These sometimes reach a thick- ness of two inches and represent surface material brought in by perco- lating waters. A good view of the bed as seen upon the west wall of the quarry is shown on opposite page. At the base of these beds there is a thin stratum of breccia made up of angular fragments of a deep blue dolomite, another which is finely laminated and further, fragments of oolite, all contained in a drab, dolomite matrix. Beneath this lies a bluish gray layer, streaked and mottled with a deeper blue coloring sub- stance. Two large sink holes were encountered in the quarry, which at the time of examination was in the form of a semicircle, with a radius of about one hundred and thirty feet. These holes were well like openings with a diameter of six to ten feet, containing at the bottom a mass of irregular fragments, cemented with crystallized calcium carbonate. The following analysis of the rock from this quarry was obtained by the geological survey in 1900:
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