Brownstone Quarries get Shown Off!
Reprinted from the June 26, 2004 Middletown Press with permission

PORTLAND—Past an industrial slice of Portland, Jim Tripp beckoned to a visitor to follow him to a special place. It is a magical place, of sweeping vistas, a waterfall playing over sun-dappled rocks, and a deep pool of clear, cold water. And the best part of it is that it is in town, and it's free to the people of Portland and their neighbors.

Tripp is the president of the Brownstone Quorum, and the special place he and his fellow Quorum members were sharing with the public were the two brownstone quarries that were so central to the growth of Portland—and could be again.

The Quorum held its fifth annual Quarry Focus Day Saturday. The program was complete with hikes, boating in the flooded quarries, music, catered al fresco dining, and, Quorum members hope, a developing awareness of the uniqueness of the quarries.

"We want to get people to come down here and see it, and realize that this is their park," Tripp explained.

Behind him, the four-man Mike Troderman Group was playing Ellington's "Satin Doll" under a small, wall-less tent set up on the promontory, which juts out from the southwest shore of the quarry.

Below the promontory, canoes and kayaks traversed the water that in places is 70-90 feet deep and covers 300 years of the history of quarrying in Portland.

Using one of those canoes, architect and Quorum member Dan Davis introduced two visitors to the quarries.

In places, it looks like the work has just ended and that the crews will be back at work on Monday' in fact, the quarries were abandoned 70 some years ago.

In other places, especially past an island that extends out from the east side of the quarry, a first-time visitor feels like he has stumbled upon a place that is timeless.

Davis pointed to bore holes that were drilled down into the rock from above, and into which explosives were set to blast off the face off the quarry wall.

The dislodged stone fell to the bottom of the quarries, where it was picked up and put on small rail cars that brought it across the quarry to the west side. There, the stone was loaded onto ships that took it down the Connecticut River and out to sea, to buildings in New York, London and San Francisco.

Traces of the rail bed lie just below the surface of the water; in places, a person can walk across the bed.

The music died away in the distance and silence enveloped the scene.

The only sounds were the water slapping against the canoe hull and Davis's paddle dipping into the water.

Within a mile of this spot, 35,000 or more people living in a metropolitan area in the early years of the 21st century. But in the canoe at that moment, that all seemed a million miles away.

That was especially true when the canoe turned toward the towering rock face that forms the northeast side of the quarry. Here, there are no signs of the work that went on for some many years. Rather, the feeling is like the great red stone mesas of the desert Southwest.

Elsewhere, fallen trees enshrouded by moss lie just below the surface in places, adding a decidedly eerie quality.

Over the years, Davis said, cars have been retrieved from the quarry. And, he said, there are persistent stories of abandoned quarry equipment still lying on the bottom.

Because of their depth, the quarries are often used for training by various police agencies. Saturday, a member of the state police dive team came to the site to put on an in-the-water/under-the-water demonstration.

Along the northwest corner, there are dense woodlands; ducks swam lazily on the water and uncounted birds darted in and out along the shore. Coming back to the promontory, Davis passed a wall built in the 1930s as part of the Works Progress Administration.

The quarries were designated a national historic landmark in 2000.

"We want to remind people of its historic designation," Quorum member Cindy Andrus said, "and we want to open it up to the people of Portland and of the state of Connecticut." But, she added, members oppose any plan to fill in the quarries and build houses there. "We want to keep this was wild as possible."

Quorum member Thomas Bransfield said the group has a plan to upgrade the launch and add picnic tables and better parking to the site.

The plan, which Bransfield said members hope to complete by summer's end, involves using part of the heritage of the quarries to serve the people of today. The plan calls for placing large blocks of brownstone in strategic places to form a barrier along the edge for promontory and also to better delineate the portage down to the water's edge.

"We want people to know this park is here, and that they can come here and use it," Tripp said.