Our products are remnants of the oldest slate quarry in Maine, The Crocker Quarry of Brownville.  This quarry was opened in 1843 and was known worldwide for its high quality of slate manufactured into both roofing shingles, and telephone and telegraph switchboards.

          The resource was discovered and made public by Maine’s early mapmaker Moses Greenleaf.  His findings were written in his book “Survey of Maine” published in 1829.  A couple of gentlemen from Wales read of the discoveries and migrated with their families to Brownville.  They were directly responsible for locating the major slate veins in the area, namely our Crocker Quarry and the Merrill Quarry just across the Pleasant River.

In 1843 a Welsh quarryman, William Hughes, and three partners; Samuel Crocker, Joseph Simmons, and Isaac Pitman, opened the first commercial slate quarry in Maine.  This was to become known as the Crocker quarry.

From the beginning of production, slate roofing shingles were the majority of the product shipped from the Crocker quarry.  Other items such as switchboard stock, mill stock and etc. would be mined and finished here but not to the extent of the roofing products.

Slate for roofing is sold today as it was then, by the “square” which is 100 square feet of product.  Many accounts of the production output of the quarry exist, but they are not easily deciphered.  Some accounts say that there were between 8 and 12,000 squares of roofing slate manufactured a year, for total revenues of 30 to 40,000 dollars.

Certainly the gross receipts sound small in today’s world, as does the total output of the operation.  That compiled with the fact that at one time there were almost 120 men working the quarries and living in shacks on site or nearby.  These men were expected to work six and a half, 12-hour days, a week in the quarry.

The process of harvesting and finishing the slate was long, arduous, and dangerous.  To begin with, at the site the earth had to be moved off to the side of the excavation in order to expose the rock.  Once exposed, the rock was drilled and blasted with black powder to clear away the upper sections that had been fractured and eroded by time and glaciers.  A shaft was blasted along the direction of the natural fractures of the slate, about 30 degrees off horizontal.   Once the shaft had been cleared of its rubble, small diameter holes were drilled in the sides of the shaft by hand, and then charged with black powder.  After the explosion men used pry bars and the likes to break the slabs of slate off the quarry walls.  The rock was manhandled into a cart on very narrow gauge tracks and hauled to the surface by man, mule, oxen, or horse.  Once on top it was graded and separated as per its end use.  The “waste” was hauled to the “dumps” on rail tracks by mule and manpower.  The quality stone was taken to the finishing sheds where skilled craftsmen and their apprentices would work the stone by hand to create shingles.  The shed was an elevated structure with an open faced “cellar” where the chips and leftovers of the splitting and shaping process were sent below to be carted off to the dumps by manual labor.   When dynamite was invented the process became a bit easier with it being used to make short work of the demolition of the lower grade stone.  Also at some point, a few Welshmen imported a diamond bladed steam powered saw that was used by the finishers to trim the stone before it was split, therefore saving much time and labor.

The slate roofing tiles from the Crocker quarry were exhibited at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1876 and won a first place award for the highest quality of roofing slate.

The Crocker quarry has two pits.  The southerly pit is approximately 300 by 200 feet square and the back or northerly pit is about 100 by 100 feet. Both are reported to be around 350 feet deep. The dumps encompass 8 acres and are about 50 to 80 feet deep containing over 650,000 cubic yards of what we consider today as “landscaping stone”.  There are gravity drain tunnels carved through the rock to the Pleasant River some 1000 feet away, that keep the level of ground water to about 30 feet below the rim of the pits. It is quite likely that the quarries will remain dormant and full of water for a long time to come.

The ownership of the quarry site passed through a number of hands over the years.  Some operations did well others only mediocre.  Eventually the Brownville Slate Company finally ceased operations in 1927 and divided up and sold the properties.

 As with any small business enterprise established in the mid 1800’s, there is not a large amount of documented history.  Much of what is written above has been derived from discussions with knowledgeable townspeople and the works of local Brownville historian: Mr. William R. Sawtell and his book ”Brownville Slate Quarries” published in1998 by the author and printed by the Howland’s printing company of Old Town, Maine.  Mr. Sawtell has written almost 40 historical works of the surrounding areas and all are great reading.