Stony Creek Quarry tour in Branford takes trip back in time

BRANFORD On Saturday morning, roughly 100 people enjoyed a jaunt through roughly 600 million years of history, courtesy of the Stony Creek Quarry.

At one point in its heyday, the granite pulled from the ground employed more than 400 workers. Today, that labor force has been whittled down to four.

“That was so long ago,” stone mason and former First Selectman Anthony “Unk” DaRos said Saturday. “Look around you. Look at the machines. They do all the work now. It was quite a place in its day.”

DaRos and former Guilford First Selectmen Carl Balestracci, two men whose quarrying backgrounds run about as deep as the vein of granite that run through this region of Connecticut earth, played the role of tour guides on Saturday.

DaRos said the early 1900s marked Stony Creek’s heyday. In 1870 there were roughly 370 residents who lived in Stony Creek. DaRos said that by 1900 that number had boomed to about 1,400. With progress came more businesses, like blacksmiths and carpenters.

“All because of the quarry,” DaRos said.

But quarry life back then was not for the weak. If monstrous slabs of granite or explosions didn’t hurt you, the air could literally kill you.

“You were going to get hurt sooner or later,” DaRos said. “The stonecutters called it consumption.”

The truth was that men cutting stone did so inside enclosed buildings. Silica, a mineral found within the rocks pulled out of the quarry, entered the air during the stonecutting process.

“Actually it was silicosis,” he said about the lung disease that claimed the lives of most stonecutters before they reached the age of 45. “This quarry was noted for it.”

DaRos said the reason stonecutters worked in an enclosed space was because “the labor department in those days thought it wasn’t nice to have men working outside.”

As he spoke, standing at the foot of the now-defunct old quarry site, his voice could be heard echoing off a series of towering, pink granite walls. DaRos spoke for roughly an hour. The former first selectman is a stone mason himself by trade. His grandparents once ran a boarding house at the quarry. Balestracci’s grandfather was a stonecutter himself during the early 1900s.

DaRos explained how in those days nobody knew what silicosis was. He as a boy watching some of the “old-timers” succumb to the disease. There was the relentless coughing, the first sign of the disease’s onset. DaRos said that the only thing the stonecutters had that controlled the coughing was whisky.

“It got so bad that they drank on the job,” he added. “I always say when I look around, thank God the country is already built. Today you would never be able to do what these men did.”

Many of the east coast’s most recognizable buildings and bridges were completed thanks to the granite pulled from Stony Creek Quarry. It can be seen in the base of the George Washington Bridge, the foundation of the Statue of Liberty and in New York City street curbs. In New Haven the granite can be seen in the steps of Yale University’s Woolsey Hall. Further east down the shore, the same granite helps protect the coastline at Hammonasset Beach State Park, courtesy of several breakwater slabs installed in 1955.

DaRos said the last stone was pulled out of the old quarry site in the mid 1980s. Just beyond the peak of the old quarry’s northern wall, a new quarry carries on the granite tradition. Quarry worker Stacy Mancini, who’s worked at the quarry for 10 years, said there’s enough stone left at the new quarry to last for another 350 years.

Mancini led visitors on a tour of the new quarry site, pointing out that excavators are busy digging even deeper. She explained that the quarry is producing two sets of granite product. The pinker, more colorful stone is known as aggregate granite. Today, there are machines scattered throughout the quarry’s upper bowl that are used to crush the aggregate granite into pebbles commonly used in landscaping. The standard dimensional granite is used in everything from countertops to buildings.

“We label it steak and hamburger,” she said. “The steak is the large solid granite. Hamburger is obviously the aggregate that we use in things like our driveways.”

Mancini said the latest granite hauled out of the quarry is being used in New York City’s Battery Park. Last summer, Stony Creek granite was used for the city’s Federal Plaza. Another recently finished project featuring the quarry’s granite is Quinnipiac University’s new Center for Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences.

“The quarry is doing a lot of business right now,” she said. “There are always orders on the board.”

Call Evan Lips at 203-789-5727. Have questions, feedback or ideas about our news coverage? Connect directly with the editors of the New Haven Register at AskTheRegister.com.