Stone Quarries of Centerville-Washington Township

It is unknown when stone, which was used for bridge masonry, curbstones, sidewalks, millstones, watering troughs, and buildings, was first quarried in Washington Township.  The first stone house, the Asahel Wright House, is dated at approximately 1806.

When gravel replaced dirt as a road bed, much of the stone used to build our early Montgomery County highways was crushed and hauled from Centerville quarries.  The first paved road in the county is said to be the road between Centerville and Miamisburg. 

 Some of our early quarries sites still reveal stone and others do not.

 

     In the early 1800s, a group of Shakers from Union Village in Warren County spent a winter living in a cabin on Sheehan Rd. and quarrying stone from the quarry located on a little creek nearby.  A lone stone can be seen across the street from a springhouse built from the stones of a crumbling house.

 

     The large pond at Benham's Grove on N. Main Street is outlined by large pieces of rock from the quarry.

     CenterVillage Apartments at 74 W. Franklin St. (Westerfield Dr.) was the location of a quarry.  The rental office was the home of James Manuel, dean of the local stone masons.  He fashioned stones that built many of the area's homes.  The photo shows the back of the house and the swimming pool.

 

     The brick wall in the back of the parking lot of the post office on Maple St. covers the stone wall of the quarry.
 

The E. Franklin St. quarry across from today's Centerville High School ran from 1879 until the 1940s.  The business supplied commercial stone and became one of the largest of its kind in the Miami Valley.  As many as 320 men worked at the quarry and small homes for workers were built at the rim of rock at the quarry's west end.  One still stands at the corner of E. Franklin St and Lake Glen Ct.

Quarry on East Franklin Street



Quarrying was once a major industry in the area.  At times workers extracted up to 4000 tons of building materials daily from the area quarries. (undated)

 




 The Cincinnati-Lebanon and Northern Railroad passed within 1/4 mile of the main stone quarry.  A spur line was built from the quarry to the main railroad. (1915)

 

In this early picture workers are hauling crushed stone by horse and wagon.

These are trucks lined up to haul stone in the 1930s.

In later days, steam shovels lifted and carried loose soil to cars, leaving a smooth floor of stone, and water-cooled electric drills extracted the slabs.  Every four days, workers set explosives in six holes drilled into the quarry walls.  Each hole was 18 feet deep and placed six to eight feet apart.  Electric wires connected the holes to a switch some distance away from the buried explosives.  One touch on the switch and there was an upheaval that loosened the stone.  The limestone was sorted and sized for builders according to color - blue, white, and tan. 

 

 

The Lawson Allen family lived in the 1838 stone house at 80 Glencroft Place when it was just a lane from Waynesville Road to the farmhouse.  In 1856, they sold the farm to their son John and his wife, Sarah Jane Whitset.  In 1879, John leased five acres of his land to a Xenia industrialist for the quarrying of stone.  Stone was quarried by hand until the 1920s.  At that time, the site had grown to 75-acres and was acquired by H.E. Talbott and the Casparis Stone Company and modern machinery was instituted to do the work.



The Lawson Allen house at 80 Glencroft Place where the quarry managers lived.

 

 
Elmer T. Walker

 Elmer T. Walker was from New York, but had been working as manager of a stone quarry in Piqua before he arrived in Centerville  in 1921.  He was an educated man, having received five different diplomas from various correspondence schools in Pennsylvania, Chicago, and from the University of Cincinnati.  He and his wife, Mary, raised seven children.

Part of the quarry area had a reservoir filled with water.  The children learned to swim in the lake.  There was an island in the middle that they called Prince Edward Island.  Whenever the children swam, Mrs. Walker kept watch from the attic window.

Elmer stocked the lake with fish like bass and blue gill.  Fishing was not allowed for two years in order for the stock to develop.

At the time of their father's death, Charles was age 20, Frances age 18, Robert age 17, Marjorie age 15, Mary age 14, John age 11, and Helen age 9.

(From 1982 interview with Mrs. Walker, age 92.)

 

 

     A great tragedy marked the end of the large-scale quarry operation.  On March 15, 1932, Elmer Walker, 43, and 3 employees, James Welcher, 22,  John Ratliff, 32, and Elwood Brackett, 24 were crushed to death in a rock slide.  Workers freed the men, but two had been killed instantly.  Walker and another employee died on the way to the hospital.

     John Crain survived and said the rock moved without a sound, there was no warning and the ledge crumbled.  The rocks did not fall straight down from above the spot where the men were working, but toppled away from the ledge on the right, falling on the men when the thin wall they had constructed collapsed.  (from news article)

 


  
Sam Frye continued to work the stone by hand after the quarry accident.

  

   After the accident, quarry operations continued under Sam Frye, one of few African-Americans who had been employed at the quarry in the 20s and 30s.  Frye continued to live and work alone into the 1940s.  He worked by hand meeting individual demands for stone.  Using basic tools such as 16-pound hammers and large crowbars, he turned out as much as five tons of rock a day.   He often recalled the days when heavy machinery dug up rocks weighing six to eight tons and stone crushers ground all day long.  He started out in the business in 1898 as a child carrying water to the men.  He never had a formal education in geology but he knew his stones.  Elmer Walker consulted Frye on many matters because he considered him very knowledgeable about quarry work.
     In 1936, Centerville began a waterworks system located at the old stone quarry lake.  Until that time, residents had depended on wells and cisterns for their water supply.  WPA workers laid 28,000 feet of pipe connecting 84 users to the system.  The water lines were also used for fire protection.  A Waterworks celebration was held to dedicate the completion of the project in July 1938.

     In 1956, Centerville merged its water and sewer systems with those of Montgomery County.  The Rod and Reel Club purchased the waterworks land and quarry lake.