The Lime Kilns

The Lime Kilns. Red Mill Museum Village. , The Mulligan Quarry was a low-tech operation where burning and sorting limestone was hard and dirty work. , , At the Mulligan Quarry, pieces of limestone were broken and sorted at the stone crusher and screen house. The crushed stone was used as a building material in road and railroad construction. Crushed stone was also charged into the lime kilns and burned to produce quick lime, an excellent fertilizer, needed by farmers to open and loosen heavy clay soil and consolidate loose, sandy soil. It was applied at the rate of forty to fifty bushels per acre. At the lime kilns, alternate layers of limestone and pea coal were loaded into the open top of the kilns. When the chamber was filled it was capped with clay, which was called topping the kiln. A fire, kindled from below, worked its way up through the charge, burning the limestone into quicklime. A burn usually lasted two to three weeks, depending on the weather. After the kiln cooled, the finished quicklime was raked out through an opening near the bottom of the stack. , The stone crusher, powered by a 35-horsepower steam engine, broke large chunks of stone from the quarry down to a manageable size. The machine was fed by hand from a platform above and could pulverize five tons an hour. A bucket conveyer, run by a belt from the steam engine, took the broken stone to the top of the screen house where it was sorted by size. , From the shoots at the bottom of the screen house different grades of stone could be loaded into wagons, half inch stone was used for road work. One inch stone was used for concrete aggregate and three inch stone for railroad ballast. , , The Lime Kiln , Work at the lime kiln was all done by hand. Workers loaded, burned and raked out a number of kilns in rotation. Burning kilns needed constant attention. Heating the charge changed the limestone from calcium carbonate to calcium oxide (quicklime), liberating large quantities of dangerous carbon dioxide. , As soon as the lime was cool enough to handle, wagons pulled up to the kiln and loaded bushel baskets full for delivery to farms in a thirty mile market area. The average kin could make enough lime in one charging to cover approximately nine acres of land. , , ( photo captions ) , - Farrell-Bacon Jaw Crusher, c. 1905-1912 , The stone crusher, which will reduce the material for use on the new turnpike, has been placed in the Mulligan Quarry last Friday. It was hauled into position by the steam roller, the two making a formidable looking combination traveling down west Main Street. Two sluices were broken en route by the weight of the big machines. , Hunterdon Democrat, Wednesday, May 10, 1916 , - Crusher and Screen House , Stone was shoveled from a platform above into the jaws of the crusher. The pulverized stone was collected in a bin then taken by an inclined bucket elevator to the top of the screen house. Inside the screen house the crushed stone tumbled through a cylindrical metal trommel screen with graduated holes permitting the stone to be separated by size. Different grades of stone were collected in bins below. , - One of the products produced at the Mulligan Quarry was crushed stone for road construction. This 1911 picture shows a crew doing road work in the Clinton area. , - Michael Mulligan proudly stands along with his teamsters and their wagons in front of his bank of kilns.