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.

When Fremont City Gardener Jon Kuddes opens the door to the greenhouse, he opens the door to a world of color.

Reds and pinks dominate, but added to the array are ornamental grasses in shades of green and deep red and a little color in the new plants in plastic containers.

All have been spread across the tops of the many tables lining the greenhouse walls. Even the ground beneath the tables has splashes of color, gifts from the seeds that have dropped there and been allowed to sprout and spread.

Kuddes transplants mature plants, harvests seeds and clips cuttings so Fremont’s city-owned flower beds will be awash with color throughout the growing season. In the greenhouse, the grass table is the first plant table encountered. It holds five different varieties of grasses.

“I do a lot of work transplanting grasses. I dig up a clump from the center of a plant and am able to get four or five plants out of that clump. I keep them here in the greenhouse for a year or two before planting them in the flower beds,” Kuddes said. “I started with three plants of fountain grass and have grown a dozen or more from those.”

Fountain grass is planted in the bigger flower beds.

On another table are canna lilies, seven varieties, all started from a tuber or root of a plant growing in one of the beds and harvested at the end of the growing season. About 200 plants fill the table top. It’s a labor-intensive job to dig up the plants each fall, clean soil from the bulbs, then plant them in pots. This is done in October and November to give the bulbs time to take root, grow over the winter and be ready to replant in the spring.

There is the red, white and blue table with blue and white ageratum and red and white vinca. Kuddes estimates there are about 900 plants on the table. Red salvia, impatiens, marigolds and other plants fill remaining tables.

“Not everything I plant, I grow here,“ Kuddes said. “The Splash Station and the cemetery need color right away. I try to get color at the cemetery for Memorial Day.”

The remaining flower beds are mostly filled with plants Kuddes has grown in the greenhouse. It was not always so. When he started in March 2008, not much propagation was happening in the greenhouse. In 2007, the city spent $10,000 on bedding plants. Last summer, the city spent about $700. That amount includes seeds, plants, plant containers and potting soil that Kuddes mixes himself, a 75 percent savings on soil alone.

Kuddes uses his own design ideas for the flower beds.

“I do a lot of it in my head,” he said.

He has drawn design sheets on his computer for each bedding plot. He saves them so they can be used each year to re-imagine the space based on what he has available for planting.

When Kuddes began college at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, he planned to be a “turf guy” who would maintain the grass at sports venues like ball parks and golf clubs.

A summer opportunity moved him from that path and into public flower beds. Kuddes grows the plants, designs the flower beds and plants them.

“I am self-taught, hands-on, and learning as I go,” he said.

Flower seeds are saved from year to year.

“I collect the seeds when the blooms get to the place where they are crispy and dried up. I pull off the bloom of a plant like salvia, let it dry, then collect the seeds. It’s the same with marigolds. There can be a million seeds in one marigold bed,” he said.

This season, he will use cuttings grown from plants used in the beds four years ago. He prepares the transplant by snipping off all flowers and larger leaves from a flowering stem. Kuddes will trim the buds as soon as they begin to show color so the plant can focus more of making a good root system. This year will be his sixth generation of cuttings from impatiens. He begins taking cuttings in January for plants used in the flower beds the coming summer.

Hostas and day lilies fill the spaces under the tables. They grow in the gravel below so they can be transplanted easily into the flower beds. Piles of pots and trays fill remaining greenhouse spaces.

“There are about 24 landscaped areas, flower beds and planters throughout the city of Fremont. They are located in the parks, around city building and facilities and in the right-of-way areas,” he said.

Under each landscaped area location is listed the number and location of each bed or planting. For example, under the listing for downtown are 25 cutouts in sidewalks, 45 hanging baskets, the landscaped area in the KHUB parking lot, 12 planters on various corners and the flower bed in “Rump’s Lot.”

Kuddes spent almost 90 hours just watering plants and flowers last year. He uses a tank truck for watering chores and a part-time employee waters hanging baskets in the downtown area.

“When the beds still look good in August, there’s a lot to be proud of,” he said.

Dead plants must be replaced with greenhouse stock and a storm can mean lots of extra hours getting the beds back in shape.

“There are 130 different things I take care of, from small little planters and urns in the cemetery to the big beds like the one in Memorial Park,” he said.

Most of the flowering plants are annuals. Kuddes prefers annuals.

“There are 30 different annuals for color all year long. Perennials give color for a month, then are finished blooming for the season. Annuals can provide flowers for the length of the growing season,” he said.

Kuddes has a list of future landscaping projects like the areas around the Barnard Park gazebo and rose garden.

In the planter outside the greenhouse on South Broad Street tulips are in bloom. The flower beds around Fremont City Auditorium also hold tulips and daffodils. In a few weeks the culmination of a year of planting and propagation will begin to be visible all over the city — Kuddes’ work displayed for all to see.