Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: Barry Swackhamer
Taken: August 19, 2012
Caption: Hauling Limestone Marker
Additional Description: Just 300 yards up this slope lies Blue Cliff – a 150 foot high quarry face. To transport the limestone from the quarry to the kilns, an ingenious tramway system was built. It had two cars, each linked via cable to a single drum at the top of the hill. As the loaded car descended, and unwound the cable on one side of the drum, the cable on the other side wound up, pulling up the empty car. Most of the tramway had just three rails, with a four-rail passing section in the middle. At the base of the grade, cars were switched to a two-rail track which ran horizontally behind the top of the kilns (ties still visible).

The limestone formed from shells layed [sic] down on the seafloor millions of years ago. Although almost everybody calls it limestone, technically it is a type of marble – rock formed from limestone that has been changed by heat and pressure in the earth’s crust. This process obliterated any traces of the fossils it once contained. Sometimes the rock included impurities such as graphite and silica.
Submitted: August 31, 2012, by Barry Swackhamer of Brentwood, California.
Database Locator Identification Number: p217801
File Size: 2.408 Megabytes

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