Marble Quarry

Marble Quarry. Marble - A Rock Remade. [top panel] 500 million years ago limestone was forming in ancient seas. No plants or animals were found on the land at that time. Primitive plants and animals did live in the earth's oceans, and the molecular building locks for our very own Cockeysville Marble were joining together and precipitating onto the ocean floor as limy mud. , Over millions of years, continents repeatedly collided resulting in catastrophic geological upheavals, burying limestone formations deep within the earth. , < Limestone Becomes Marble - A Metamorphic Rock . , The intense heat and pressure form this ancient geologic activity recrystallized the limestone here at Oregon Ridge into marble. , [bottom panel] , By the late 1700s, prospectors searching throughout the area for mineral deposits knew there was iron ore at Oregon Ridge. The property also contained deposits of marble, a key ingredient in the iron making process. Within this quarry pit, miners blasted large chunks for marble from the rock mass and then pounded those chunks into pieces which could be loaded into carts and hauled to the furnace. , Stockpiling the Ingredients , Teamsters using mule-drawn tip-carts, piled iron ore, coal, and marble near the furnace. , Other Marble Uses , Most of the mined marble was used in the furnace mix, however some marble was used in house foundations and as liming in the water well. , > How was the Marble Mined? , One worker held and turned a star-drill while the other worker pounded the drill with a heavy sledge hammer. The drilled hole was filled with black powder and a fuse. The charge was tamped and then ignited, blasting loose large chunks of the marble.