Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/372

356 the quarrying country, for the better trucking of stone to the docks at Wilbur.

Some of the quarries have been veritable gold mines. One in particular, known as the great Lawson Quarry, at West Hurley, is said to have produced over four million dollars' worth of flag and other classes of bluestone. This quarry was worked by Lucius Lawson, now of Chattanooga, Tenn., for fully thirty years, and in it nearly two thirds of a village of three hundred people earned their living. The great quarry has now been abandoned, as the top has got so heavy that it does not pay to remove it to get at the good stone. In consequence of its abandonment, the village of West Hurley has dwindled to less than one third its former size, and is rapidly becoming a deserted village. Hundreds of other quarries have been abandoned for similar reasons, yet the whole bluestone district of Ulster County is thickly dotted with new quarries, which are opened as soon as the old ones are abandoned.

In working the quarries there is a great difference in the thickness of the slabs taken out. The formation exists in perpendicular blocks of different surface dimensions which are formed of flat plates piled up like cardboard. The top of worthless stone and earth is first removed by blasting with powder, after which wedges are driven in the natural seams which separate the plates, lifting them up, after which they are hoisted out with derricks. In working a block the slabs may run to several thicknesses, varying from two to ten inches. The thin slabs are then cut up into what is known as Corporation four and five foot flag and smaller sizes, while the heavier blocks are preserved intact for such huge platforms as we see reaching from building to curb line on the sidewalks of New York. Many of the blocks worked are so small in surface area that they are unfit for flagging, and are consequently worked up in coping, pillar caps, window and door sills and lintels, building and bridge stone for tramways. Other blocks are found suitable for curb and gutter alone, while some quarries furnish slabs so small and thin that they are used only for floor tiling, or for the facing of brick walls. Again, some of the slabs, or more properly platforms, taken from the quarries are from twenty to thirty feet square, ten inches thick, and weigh over twenty tons. Owing to the difficulty in handling and the danger of breakage during transportation, these platforms are seldom taken to tide water, but are broken up at the quarries into more convenient sizes for handling. Sometimes, however, monoliths of tremendous size and weight have been transported to the docks at Wilbur, the one shown in the illustration being twenty by twenty-four feet in surface area, nine inches thick, without a flaw, and weighing several hundredweight over twenty