As a mountainous state, Colorado has a long history of natural stone quarrying. Over this time, Colorado quarries have supplied natural stone for some of the most iconic buildings and institutions across the state and nation, from the University of Colorado and Colorado Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington, VA.
On a smaller scale, Colorado’s rich history of natural stone quarrying has influenced generations of architects, city planners, homebuilders, and landscapers, all of whom have made their own contributions to the incredible natural aesthetic of Colorado stone. Join the Rock Garden as we whisk you back through time to experience some of the most significant moments in Colorado’s stone-quarrying history.
Humans have been quarrying rock in what is now Colorado for thousands of years. For example, archaeological evidence indicates that indigenous people quarried sandstone slabs from the Lyons area more than 6,500 years ago. After gold was found near Cherry Creek in 1858, the city of Denver was established as a supply center for regional mining operations. More gold discoveries kicked off the famous Colorado Gold Rush of 1859, which drew more than ten thousand people from the eastern United States.
An important part of early gold mining operations were mill stones or “grind stones,” which were large, flat boulders used to crush gold-containing rock. These stones were occasion for one of the earliest mentions of a natural stone quarry in Colorado. On November 3, 1859, The Rocky Mountain News in Denver wrote that “Pike’s Peak Grind-stones” were available at a local supply shop, having been “obtained near the town of Baden, ten miles West of this city, from an inexhaustible quarry.”
Millstones weren’t the only stones in demand in Gold Rush-era Denver, as over the next year the News also reported “a very fine quarry of blue freestone” in the area, as well as a marble quarry near Golden. The freestone was likely used for local construction, while the marble would probably have been sold out-of-state. These early examples show how natural stone was quarried for a variety of purposes well before Colorado became a state.
A man stands in front of a large gray sandstone deposit at Henry Frey’s quarry near Fort Collins, CO (c. 1910).
Demand for natural stone exploded after Colorado joined the Union in 1876. The state’s population grew from around 40,000 in 1870 to nearly 200,000 by 1880, and the associated construction boom required raw stone materials on an unprecedented scale. Among these materials was flagstone, used in the construction of sidewalks, roads, paths, and buildings.
In the 1880s, the Fort Collins area became a hotspot for flagstone quarries, especially in the Spring Canyon area west of the city. In December 1881, the Fort Collins Courier published a lengthy description of these quarries, mentioning no fewer than nine in the area. One of the most prominent was operated by the Fort Collins Flag Stone Company, which had a contract to supply the city of Denver with some “700 miles” of flagstone, as well as a contract with Denver’s Tabor Opera House.
The Courier closed the article by noting that stone quarries in northern Colorado “extend … from the Wyoming line clear to Boulder city.” This iteration of Northern Colorado’s quarrying industry thrived until the 1920s, when concrete became more widely available and preferable for both residential and municipal construction. Still, the industry established northern Colorado as a reliable source of natural stone, paving the way for today’s quarry operations.
This ad for decorative stone quarried near Lyons appeared in a 1953 edition of The Estes Park Trail.
In direct competition with the flagstone quarries west of Fort Collins were the red-tinted sandstone quarries near Lyons, operated by that town’s founder, Edward S. Lyon. Like flagstone, sandstone was a major road-building material at the time, and although it didn’t see true success until its founder left the area, Lyon’s sandstone company became one of the premier local suppliers of crushed sandstone for road construction. Scandinavian immigrants did the bulk of the quarrying work in these early years.
After a rail line connected Lyons to Denver in 1884, other nearby towns got into the sandstone business as well, but only Lyons survived to the present. As with the Fort Collins quarries, the advent of asphalt and concrete caused the industry to collapse in the early 1900s, although quarries pivoted to more architectural and decorative sandstone. Today, several of Lyons’ original sandstone buildings remain, and more recent buildings were constructed with red sandstone as a nod to the rock that put the town on the map.
Colorado Yule Marble Company workers watch as a block of marble is removed for processing (c. 1913-1917).
Around the same time as Fort Collins and Lyons were supplying building stone to the Front Range, large deposits of marble were found in the Elk Mountains west of Aspen, near Yule Creek in the Crystal River Valley.
The small town of Marble was established near the deposits in 1881, but the area was too remote to develop into a viable quarry. Transportation issues persisted until 1895, when the quarries near marble were finally awarded a major contract to supply nearly 140,000 square feet of marble for the Colorado State Capitol building. With that contract complete, the marble had proven its quality and the area was primed for serious investment.
Channing Meek, the former president of the Colorado Coal & Iron Company, arrived in Marble in 1905 and immediately consolidated several quarries, created the Colorado Yule Marble Company, and infused his new venture with capital. A new railroad and marble mill were built, and Meek began sending samples of the marble across the country to solicit contracts.
Manned by hundreds of Italian immigrants, the new marble operation was incredibly proficient. Among the many projects that the Colorado Yule Marble Company supplied during the twentieth century were the Cuyahoga County Courthouse in Cleveland, Ohio, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington, VA.
A woman holds up a chunk of travertine brought to the State Historical Museum in Denver in 1946.
Colorado stone served yet another purpose after World War II, when most of Europe lay in ruins. As Americans helped their allies rebuild, Colorado became a prominent source of travertine, a porous form of limestone used in the construction of many European buildings that were now reduced to rubble.
According to a 1946 article in The Rocky Mountain News, Colorado was home to “the only travertine quarries in the country,” located a few miles west of Cañon City. Some of this stone was cut into ten-ton blocks and shipped east to be shaped and sent overseas, while certain colored slabs went to a nearby mill to be crushed into material for decorative flooring.
In addition to going into hundreds of buildings in Europe, Colorado travertine had also been used in the construction of the Denver City Hall and the Department of Commerce Building in Washington, D.C.
In the decades after World War II, the postwar housing boom fueled the opening and operation of natural stone quarries for residential building purposes, leading to the state’s modern dynamic stone industry.
The Rock Garden in Fort Collins is a proud inheritor of Colorado’s natural stone quarrying tradition. Like the quarries of old, our local quarries in Larimer County provide stone for a variety of purposes; while our garden mostly focuses on the dynamic aesthetic value of natural stone in uses such as decorative rock, it was the earlier, more practical quarrying efforts that paved the way for today’s modern decorative stone quarrying.
You can see this legacy as you walk through the Rock Garden, as you’re greeted by the same ruddy, red sandstone that met early settlers near Lyons, or the same pale, rough-worn limestone that became part of Colorado’s postwar identity in the 1950s. We can’t wait to help with your next project. Contact us or stop by today!