Beginning Of Alexander Stone Company
This is an interesting article written in October 1954 and it appeared in The Marion Reporter. It tells how the Alexander Stone Company Quarry located on Hwy. 60 East, got started and some of its history.
Few people, speeding by in their cars, realize the extent of the operation nor the dramatic sidelights of the Alexander Stone Co. quarry, which is located on the crest of a hill about eight miles North of Marion.
Visible from the highway are cone-shaped mountains of crushed limestone, building gray-colored from the incessant dust, and trucks busily hauling rock or returning for loads.
Not seen are the expansive areas behind the quarry building, where hills are steadily being leveled by huge bulldozers, by dynamite and by power shovels. The giant jaws of the rock crushers in the main quarry building gulps tons of raw rock at a bite... requiring a constant flow of rock-laden trucks from the quarrying area.
For 18 years operations have continued at the present site, constantly changing the landscape and leveling hills in quest of high grade limestone from which the finished product is made.
History of Company
Back in 1936, J. B. Alexander, then in the road-building business, sought a site for quarrying from which he could obtain a high grade limestone for roadbeds. His choice of the present site was a good one, for after 18 years of steady operation, there sill remains a virtually inexhaustible supple of good limestone. (1954)
When Camp Breckenridge construction began in 1941, Alexander leased his quarrying operation to the Gorman Construction Co., who operated there for several years while constructing roads and building for the new army post.
During those years, a second quarry started operations west of the present site. This company, operated by Berry and Radcliff excavated a quarry pit running at right angles to the present east-west pit operation of the Alexander Stone Co. The old quarry pit is being used by the Alexander company as a "dumping pit" into which useless surface earth is presently being bulldozed.
After termination of the Camp Breckenridge construction, J. B. Alexander then formed a corporation in 1946. Alexander became president, W. D. Peyton, Vice-president, and R. R. Holland, secretary-treasurer and general manager. The company has continued to operate under the same corporate management since that time.
Eugene Hughes, office manager of the Alexander Stone Co., who graciously gave much of his time in assisting to prepare this article, explained that in 1948, a special problem was faced in the continually expanding operations of the quarry.
A hill in back of the presently located buildings was to be quarried, as other surrounding areas had become exhausted. The difficulty, however, was that the crest of the hill contained an old graveyard, which could not be disturbed.
By careful dynamiting and excavating, the graveyard was saved. Today its flat summit stands like an Arizona mesa, its sides gouged out and accessible only by foot. With its former adjoining hill removed and disintegrated in the crushing mill, the graveyard crest commands an expansive view of all the diverse activities and of the quarrying operation.
Expanding further westward, bulldozers shoved loose earth, shale and poor quality rock out of the way in widespread stripping operations. A wide roadway was created with a 'bedrock surface, suitable for the longer and longer trip necessary by trucks from the quarrying sites to the crushing mill.
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Alexander Stone operated the business until its last president, Gaines Wilson, died and his heirs sold the quarry to Kentucky Stone Company in 1973. Over the last 35 years, the quarry has passed through several owners including Koppers, Basier, Hanson and current owner Rogers Group.
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