I Love Vermont! Part 1 - Rock of Ages

I love Vermont! I would gladly get a t-shirt or a bumper sticker that says so! We took the Toad and drove along the Champlain Valley up towards Montpelier. The way we drove took us by what were advertised as ski areas -- though they didn't look mountainous enough to these westerners. I got a real chuckle out of this cabin. I can just hear someone telling their friends, "you can't miss it."

"If you go by the chair lift, you've gone too far..."

This is one of the area churches built with the beautiful granite from the local quarries --

I have been intrigued by quarries and stone-cutters ever since reading about the building of the cathedrals in Medieval Europe. When I read in the Lonely Planet's New England Trips that you could visit the quarries run by Rock of Ages, I was ready to go. The manufacturing plant and one of the granite quarries is located in Graniteville, Vermont.

We went to the Rock of Ages Visitor Center and signed up to take a trip to the quarry after watching a video about their operations.

We followed the guide up the dirt road to the quarry (in the summer-time you take a school bus up the hill, but since school wasn't out yet, we convoyed up in our own rigs...) --

You look down on the quarries (through a chain link fence). Older abandoned quarries are filled with water as there is no outlet to a quarry.

The quarry that is currently being worked is over 600 feet deep.

There are huge machines that drill a series of vertical holes which are filled with explosive that break the block free.

Other machines are used to undercut the blocks --

Huge blocks of the white or light gray granite are hoisted out of the quarry to be used as monuments, headstones and building facades.

These are part of the mountains of "waste" generated in the early years of the quarries when almost half of the stone was broken or crushed by the explosives used before the invention of the diamond saws. It is gradually being sold to be used for artificial reefs and road rip-rap.

There is a container of scraps that you can browse through for souvenir pieces.

After our visit to the quarry, we went on a self-guided tour of the factory where we were able to stand on the mezzanine and watch the artisans at work. This man was operating a polishing machine.

While this artist was working on the face of a design on a tombstone --

Some of the work is done by sand-blasting and other parts are very much hand work --

Several styles of monuments that have been polished and are now awaiting carving --

Huge cranes lift and transport the heavy blocks of granite throughout the factory. When the crane set this one down, it shook the building!

They even make their own very sturdy crates for shipping the finished product.

After our tour of the factory, we were encouraged to drive on through the town of Barre to Hope Cemetery. Many of the original immigrant artisans are buried here and the tombstones show off some of their fantastic workmanship. The links of this huge chain are carved from the granite.

How about this soccer ball?

The craftsmanship and precision of the carving on this cross is something else --

There must be a story about this man and his car --

This square block is a good three feet across a side --

At the entrance to the town of Barre stands this statue of a stone cutter as a tribute to the Italian immigrants who came to America to ply their trade.