Chicago West Side Quarries

I knew some big holes were dug in Chicago to get clay for brick making. And I knew there were now abandoned limestone quarries in Lemont, Joliet, Naperville and Warrenville. In fact, the one in Lemont produced stone for buildings until the quarries near Bedford, IN, made it obsolete. Now I learned there are some limestone outcroppings a lot closer to Lake Michigan.

This extract from a 1929 topo map provides an overview. Note the thick red lines in the lower-left (Bridewell Quarry) and lower-right (Stearns Quarry) corners. The red lines are a bunch of topo lines drawn in the same location because the walls of the quarries were so steep. Near the upper-left corner is the Artesian (north of Grand) and Rice (south of Grand) quarries. About a third of the way up and almost halfway over from the lower-left corner was the Chicago Union Lime Works.

1929 Chicago Loop and Englewood Quadrangles @ 1:24,000

Much of Illinois was under water 400 million years ago when Illinois was positioned below the equator. So the bedrock is sedimentary rock. If an area was a beach, you get sandstone; if it was a swamp, you get coal; and if it was a reef, you get limestone. The Chicagoland area was over a Silurian era reef. If you go deep enough, there is limestone everywhere.  In some of that limestone, some of the molecules picked up magnesium from the ground water transforming it to dolomite limestone or dolostone. Because dolostone is harder, it resisted erosion. The softer limestone sediments disappeared over geologic time and were replaced with clay. [AlauriePalmer, p2]  Dolostone is harder, that is why it could be used for dimensional stone if the deposit was not fractured. However, all of the limestone now quarried in Illinois is used for crushed stone and to make cement.

(The ubiquitous limestone bedrock deep under Chicagoland is why the tunnels to handle excess rainwater were dug about 300' deep. And why Fermilab proposed building a new accelerator in a tunnel deep underground. Unfortunately, they lost that project to Texas. And the Texas project, after spending a lot of money, was abandoned. I remember that fire ants were an issue. I don't remember if they were the issue.)

In general when a quarry became bounded by the city streets and they reached the bottom of the limestone bed (sometimes as deep as 400'), the remaining hole became a dump. The early quarries were filled with garbage. The later ones were filled with construction waste. When a dump became full, the park district bought the land and built a park on top. 

Chicago Union Lime Works (Harrison Park)

According to this topo map, the quarry was 593-213 = 380 feet deep. 

1929 Englewood Quadrangle @ 1:24,000

The dolostone was exhausted in 1929. The site immediately became a dump and was filled to the brim by the mid 1940s. The CPD acquired it in 1950 and it is now a large playing field. [AlauriePalmer, p3]

I'm starting with this quarry because the following post motivated this research.

Greg Stepanek posted four photos with this comment:

Coming from Pilsen, I heard the story many times from my parents, as well as others, that today's Harrison Park was once a quarry. It was hard for me to imagine this, since it was always Harrison Park to me, however, thanks to Greg Kozlik posting these photos here on FB on a Vintage Chicago FB group, I finally could see what it was like.  You can see both St. Paul Catholic church, and St. Matthew Lutheran church on Hoyne, both originally German, in the background. These vintage photos of the quarry were taken on October 20, 1927. What a difference today! Imagine what may lie underneath the top layer of soil.  I don't think that I'd want to know.  LOL

George E. Kanary: Great photos, Greg! Thanks for sharing. Periodically, areas of the park used to explode violently because of the accumulated decaying waste gasses. [The old quarries were filled with garbage. The newer ones were filled with construction material.]

Jonathan Tuttle

For information only.

http://alauriepalmer.net/sec.../writing/city_deposits215.pdf

Gregory James Martinez shared

What’s now Harrison Park.

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1938 Aerial Photo from ILHAP

Stearns Quarry (Henry C. Palmisano Nature Park)

The quarry opened in 1836. When it was shutdown in 1970, it was 380' deep. [timeout]

1929 Englewood Quadrangle @ 1:24,000

 

ChicagoParkDistrict
"This is the site of an ancient coral reef dating back to the Silurian age 400 million years ago. Dolomite limestone formed, and fossils that were found here are now in the collections of several area museums including Field Museum of Natural History."

site-design

1938 Aerial Photo from ILHAP

Artesian Stone and Lime (Smith Park) and Rice Stone (Industrial) Quarries

Nate Lielasus commented on a post:

It was called the Artesian Quarry, named after the once famous artesian well near Chicago and Western Aves. Rice Quarry was across the street. Collectively these, along with others, were known as the West Side Quarries. They mainly quarried limestone to be burned for quick lime or crushed for road work but there were some fine buildings constructed of stone from the West Side Quarries, including Second Presbyterian Church on Michigan and Cullerton.

Artesian was north of Grand Avenue and Rice was to the south. The depth of Artesian in 1929 was 600-486 = 114'. Rice was already closed and they got carried away dumping trash because they made a mound. The topo cartographer seems to have been wrong because "Fire Insurance maps show the Artesian quarry at 110 feet deep in 1896; by 1922, the hole was 250 feet deep and had been excavated to the boundaries of the almost rectangular city block." In 1929 the dump was full and the site transferred from the Department of Streets and Electricity to the Bureau of Parks and Recreation. The park was named for Joseph Higgins Smith, the local Alderman at the time of the property transfer. [AlauriePalmer, p4] (I'm glad the topo cartographer had stale information because the topo lines are much more interesting than a park.)

Rice was much older. It had a depth of 125' in 1896 and had been transformed into a city dump by 1922. [AlauriePalmer, p5. Includes a discussion of dumping Chicago's toxic incinerator ash]

1929 Chicago Loop Quadrangle @ 1:24,000

It appears that the city has flattened the mound to create a salt storage facility.

Street View

1938 Aerial Photo from ILHAP

The Bridewell (A Pond for a Jail)

I include a lot of context in the topo map because this area has changed a lot. And it will probably continue to change since the Illinois Northern Railroad right-of-way has been abandoned by BNSF. The quarry was east of Sacramento between 27th and 28th Streets. 

The depth was 175' in 1923. This land was part of a prison since 1871. In 1901 they discovered limestone in a clay pit and switched to selling crushed stone instead of clay. [AlauriePalmer, p9] 

1929 Englewood Quadrangle @ 1:24,000

1938 Aerial Photo from ILHAP