Sometimes There Just Aren't
Enough Rocks

Dan Veronie
Thornwood High School, South Holland

Rock quarried at the Thornton plant is processed at this facility. (Photo courtesy Dan Veronie)

As Forrest Gump said, "Sometimes there just aren't enough rocks." However, it will be a long time until that is the case in the small town of Thornton, Illinois. This suburban town south of Chicago is home of the world's largest commercial limestone quarry, owned and operated by Material Service Corporation. The Thornton quarry originally formed as a coral reef more than four hundred million years ago. The Silurian Sea covered a majority of the Chicagoland area. Many fossils have been and are still found today; the most common is the brachiopod, a small, shelled sea animal resembling a snail. Reportedly, the first use of the formation as a commercial quarry was in the 1830s when Gurdon Hubbard, a prominent pioneer settler of the Chicago area, started it. By the mid-1800s, several other settlers had purchased land and started more quarries.

The procedure was simple. The rock was blasted and crushed into smaller pieces for sale. Rollin Flanagan was the largest quarry operator by the 1880s. A number of other people had smaller quarries surrounding Flanagan's that crushed stone and also burned limestone, which was sold for different uses. Ralph E. Brownwell, a Chicago civil engineer, bought Flanagan's holdings in 1886. Brownwell and his partners increased production to meet the demand for crushed stone. By 1907 the main Brownwell quarry was about eighty-five-feet deep and covered ten acres of land. Brownwell decided that it would be cheaper to operate at a shallower depth, so he opened another twenty-six-

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The quarry pits at Thornton are thirty feet deep in some places. (Photo courtesy Dan Veronie)

foot-deep quarry west of the main one. Then in 1924 the company acquired more land and started another pit south of the main quarry, connecting the two with a tunnel under Margaret Street. Margaret Street was and still is the main east-west street in the town.

In 1930 Brownwell merged with Thomas Moulding Brick Company to become Moulding-Brownwell Corporation. As a result of the Great Depression, business slowed drastically, and mining ceased permanently in the south pit in 1936. A short time later, the Crown brothers, owners of Material Service Corporation, acquired the business. At this time, Material Service became one of the largest stone producers in the Midwest. During World War II, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was building dams in the Midwest, but they were running out of stone. The Thornton quarry supplied the TVA with six million yards of stone so the dams could be finished. Material Service has owned the quarries since then and has continued to expand. Since the quarry is surrounded by homes, highways, and residential streets, it is impossible to expand laterally. Any more expansion of the quarry must be downward.

Because of its size, the quarry has affected the town of Thornton in many different ways. The quarry occupies two-thirds of the city of Thornton. The residential area would fit on the quarry's floor. A thirty-three-story building could be built at the bottom of the hole, and its roof would be level with the surface. Residents of the town have gotten to know the quarry from their childhood and have become accustomed to its presence. Until a few years ago, quarry officials offered guided tours on Saturday mornings so that visitors could look for fossils embedded in the rock. Also, a nearby elementary school, Wolcott School, took field trips into the crater to learn about geography and animal life of long ago. Some creationists even took a trip to the bottom to gather fossils and attempt to create a theory of evolution through science.

The quarry benefits the town of Thornton financially, too. Since the quarry occupies the majority of the village, it meets most of the taxing bodies' needs through property taxes. In a conversation with a company spokesperson, he declined to quantify the amount paid in property taxes. He did mention that Material Service Corporation has been a longtime supporter of local Little League baseball teams and has provided other unspecified financial assistance to the village itself.

People walk on sidewalks, drive on pavement, and play basketball on concrete lots every day. They take these things for granted. However, these citizens have companies like Material Service to thank for providing the materials necessary to make these activities possible. Thornton, Illinois, tends to disagree with what Forrest Gump had to say. In this little town, there are and will be enough rocks for a while.—[From Diana Carr and Debbie Lamoureaux, Village of Thornton Historical Society; Donald G. Mikulic and Joanne Kluessendorf, The Classic Silurian Reefs of the Chicago Area; Zay N. Smith, "Latest 'Proof' of Bible Science"; student historian's interview with Lyndon Dean, geologist for Material Service Corp., June 1, 1999.]

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