Duncan Campbell is a trained historic preservationist, so when he came into possession of an old quarry it was like he had just won the lottery.
"All of the derricks, a lot of the machinery, a blacksmith shop, cables, the cutting wire, everything was still right there on site," Campbell says, standing in front of the old blacksmith shop.
"They had been left behind with the idea that the owner of the company would probably reopen them at sometime, but then the owner of the company passed away. The man who managed it decided to retire, so the heirs of the quarry company decided to sell the property."
We can't disclose the exact location of the property because it wouldn't be safe for people to try to find it, but the quarry is on the west side of Bloomington.
Campbell guides us back to it, snaking around some trees and tall grass.
"We sort of keep the pathway cleared, but this is where the railway came in. That's why the derricks are close to that, so they can load rail cars," he says.
A few more steps and what comes to view looks like a scene for the 1979 movie Breaking Away: huge blocks of stone lining a massive pit, filled with still blue water.
Immigrants Helped Indiana Quarries Thrive
Several hundred people worked at this quarry when it was operational.
"They were so desperate for labor in the boom period. They couldn't train enough people to do all the work," Campbell says. "Now of course that's quite different with our technologies, but they were importing labor, skilled labor from England, Hungary, places where stone cutting has been in the history of the culture for centuries because they needed skilled labor."
The 1930/1940 census, shows more than 60 Italians living at this site. In reality, they didn't live here, but they spent nearly all of their time working here.
Carol Faenzi's great-grandfather was one of them.
"There were no labor laws, so life was very rough for the immigrants," she says. "My great grandfather, for example, was an artisan but had to work in the quarries for many years because that's all the work there was."
Eventually Faenzi's grandfather traveled the country working on carvings and monuments.
One of the things that makes Indiana's limestone is different is that it has a lot of flexibility. It is easy to chisel but it also weathers very well.
That made it ideal for buildings such as the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. where there are numerous gargoyles and donor names inscribed in panels.
The State's Remaining Quarries
Campbell's quarry is in the heart of Indiana's limestone belt where this malleable stone is found. The belt extends roughly from north of Bloomington to south of Bedford. It's about nine or 10 miles wide and about 40 miles long.
"This whole area was all under a big ocean at one point in time 300 million years ago," says Todd Schnatzmeyer, Indiana Limestone Institute Executive Director. "So that's what caused the sedimentary deposit of these small sea creatures and of course layers and layers of rock and other debris built up over time and then at some point the glaciers moved down from the north and they stopped at around Martinsville."
When the glaciers melted, it exposed a lot of the stone. People realized it would make a good building stone and in 1827, the first quarry was established in Stinesville.
"I get asked quite often how much stone is there," says Schnatzmeyer. "I don't think anyone knows factually how much is left. There are estimates of 500 to 1,000 years of deposit is still remaining. A lot of the issues that will come to bear now is encroachment of development because where the open pit quarries had a lot of property and didn't have to worry about buffer zones to neighboring development."
Developments border Campbell's quarry on the north side and the east side, and there's a highway nearby.
Overall though quarrying is still very active in this part of the state, and the stone is still accessible.
"In the Breaking Away sense of the limestone industry, sort of the film version, there are all these abandoned quarries and they are all full of students, but that's not really the case," says Campbell. "People do go and swim in them, but I would say there are more active sites than there are abandoned sites."
In the last decade a number of old quarries have reopened. It makes sense for folks working in the industry to do this because there can still be stone in the pits, and it costs a lot of money into the millions – to investigate new potential quarries.
Campbell plans to preserve his quarry just like it was during the peak of limestone production.
"Most of the quarries that have reopened or remained constantly opened have gotten rid of all this equipment so you can't go to a place and see all these derricks or blacksmiths shops – they're gone," he says. "This is one of the very few sites in the whole limestone belt that is still completely intact the way they walked away from it in 1973."
