Gantts Quarry

Town of Gantts Quarry
Incorporated	1910–2001
Population	0
Mayor	-
School district	Talladega County Schools
Government	Gantts Quarry Town Council - -
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Gantts Quarry was a marble quarry and former community and incorporated municipality near Sylacauga in southern Talladega County.

The marble deposit was discovered by Dr Edward Gantt who purchased the property in 1830. By 1840 Gantt was quarrying marble, and employed ox teams to haul slabs 9 miles to a landing on the Coosa River. He abandoned the operation in the late 1850s, unable to successfully recoup his costs without rail service.

Two 2-foot by 4-foot blocks of marble from Gantt Quarry represent Alabama as "Commemmorative Stones" inside the Washington Monument in Washington D.C.

The quarry was purchased in the late 1890s by Amos Mylin and Alexander King of Pennsylvania with Dr George A. Hill of Talladega County. They formed the Alabama Marble & Stone Co. in 1899, with newspaper publisher and Mayor Frank Evans of Birmingham as a major shareholder. The partners obtained modern quarrying equipment, arranged for a rail spur from the Alabama Mineral Railroad, and constructed housing and other facilities. To promote the venture, they removed large specimens of marble to be exhibited around the country. One such block— displayed in Alabama's exhibit at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York— was compared favorably to the best marble from Carrara, Italy or Paros, Greece, and reportedly generated much interest from sculptors visiting the fair.

Gantts Quarry was incorporated as a municipality in 1910, an action generally interpreted as a defense against being annexed by Sylacauga. A Gannts Quarry Post Office shared space with a small public library in a framed building which was later relocated to grounds of Sylacauga's B. B. Comer Museum and restored. In the 1920s sculptor Giuseppe Moretti partnered with Charles Harrah to quarry marble blocks at the site.

The population of Gantts Quarry peaked in the 1930 U.S. Census with 542 residents. The Great Depression suppressed the market for marble, and the town shrank to 456 by 1940. In 1944 the Moretti-Harrah company expanded its operations by marketing calcium products for industrial use through Thompson-Weinman distributers. In 1956 Thompson-Wienman took over the production operations in competition with Moretti-Harrah. By 1959 Gantts quarry was producing 100,000 tons of structural and ornamental stone per year, and processing more than 200,000 tons of crushed marble.

In 1963 the Georgia Marble Company acquired the Alabama Marble Company. The vacant company houses were demolished in the 1960s and the others sold to their occupants. Over the next decades, industrial carbonate continued to eclipse building and ornamental stone as the quarry's main product.

In 1986 English China Clays of St Austell, United Kingdom acquired Moretti-Harrah and Thompson-Weinman. In the 1990s Imerys S.A. of Paris, France purchased Georgia Marble, and then also acquired English China Clays. The combination now owns the entire 3,000-acre quarry site. It currently operates on 350 acres, extracting marble to be crushed and sold to Heritage Plastics, which processes it into calcium carbonate for use in the plastics industry.

By 2001 no residents were reported, and the municipality lost its status officially on December 31 of that year. In 2012 Imerys and the City of Sylacauga collaborated in 2012 to open a public "observation point" with a view of the former quarry. The former Moretti Harrah marble monument sign is displayed at the overlook.

Demographics

year    pop.   %change

1920 |  413 |     -   |
1930 |  542 |  +31.2% |
1940 |  456 |  -15.9% |
1950 |  426 |   -6.6% |
1960 |  238 |  -44.1% |
1970 |   63 |  -73.5% |
1980 |   71 |  +12.7% |
1990 |    7 |  -90.1% |
2000 |    0 | -100.0% |

Gallery

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  Gantts Quarry in 1974

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  Gantts Quarry in 2023

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  Sample from Gantts Quarry at the Alabama Museum of Natural History

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  Moretti-Harrah sign at Gantts Quarry

References

• "Equal to Carrara is Alabama Marble" (July 28, 1901) The Birmingham Age-Herald, p. 15
• Jacob, Judith M. (2005) "The Washington Monument A Technical History and Catalog of the Commemorative Stones" National Park Service, U.S. Department of Interior
• Cook, Ruth (2009) A Brief History of Sylacauga Marble. B. B. Comer Memorial Library Foundation
• "Gantts Quarry, Alabama" (October 20, 2022) Wikipedia - accessed March 3, 2023

External links

• Gannts Quarry at the Historic American Engineering Record, Library of Congress