West Branch Times, West Branch, Iowa, Thursday, August 8, 1901
Transcribed, as written, by Sharon Elijah, September 7, 2018
FIFTY YEARS OF HISTORY
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GOWER TOWNSHIP, CEDAR COUNTY, IOWA
By A. W. Jackson
Chapter III
The largest business enterprise in Cedar County is located in Gower township—that of the Cedar Valley stone quarries. From time immemorial the finest of building stone has been found in the township at various points. Regarding this quarry and its production I can do no better than quote liberally from a pamphlet just issued from the office of the state printer, entitled “Geology of Cedar County,” by William Harmon Norton, a portion of Vol XI of the Iowa Geological Survey, issued under the direction of Prof. Samuel Calvin, state geologist, and therefor thoroughly reliable. In this valuable work, under the head of “Building Stone”, Prof. Norton says:
“Cedar ranks easily first among the counties of the state in the value of the yearly output of building stone, a prominence due chiefly to the quarries at Cedar Valley and Lime City. * * * The good qualities of the Anamosa phase of the Gower limestone have long been recognized. * * * Its even and smooth bedding, its uniform grain, its comparative softners in working with saw and chisel when fresh from the quarry, and its hardness when recementation has taken place on drying, it obduracy to all chemical agencies of rock decay, and its resistance to frost, its pleasing color and the absence of any injurious minerals which might weaken, strain or impair its ease of working, all these characteristics contribute to make the Anamosa one of the best building stones of the West.
THE BEALER QUARRIES
“In value of output, and perfection and cost of machinery, these quarries are the most noteworthy in Iowa and among the largest in the Mississippi valley.”
“The quarries were opened seventeen years since by Mr. E. J.C. Bealer, who, as a practical bridge architect, saw the great value of the stone at this point for bridge piers and all heavy masonry. The chief quarry now in operation, was opened in November, 1894, and no expense has been spared to equip it with modern and effective machinery. A levee costing $20,000 has been built along the river front for protection against floods. Railway tracks in the quarries are so built that the force of gravitation is utilized to the utmost and no locomotive engines are required to make up the train of loaded cars which in busy seasons is sent out daily. The stripping of the quarry, consisting of twenty-five feet of soft silt known as loess, and less than ten feet of pebbly glacial clay, is cheaply and expeditiously handled hydraulically by means of a high duty steam pump, capacity three quarter million gallons per day, and suitable pipes and hose. In quarrying the stone there are employed one single and three double steam channeliers and four steam drills. One of the channellers used in the quarry holds, it is claimed, the championship record in its line of work. “It has been made to cut 400 feet in five hours, and for ten hours its record is 750 feet.” The plant includes also four eighty horse-power engines, two forty horse-power, one steam pump, low duty, capacity three quarter million gallons daily, and three pumps each of one quarter million gallons capacity, one pumping to reservoir and the others for general purposes. There are fourteen derricks in operation, ten of which are supplied with steam hoists lifting from ten to twenty tons each. A large machine shop is well equipped for repairing and rebuilding the tools and machinery of the plant.
The usual force at work aggregates 100 men, constituting with their families an industrial colony of more than usual prosperity, if one may judge by appearances. They occupy neat cottages of good size and kept in repair, situated on both sides of the river and commonly with a small allotment of land. Most of these properties belong to the owner of the quarries, and a just pride is evidently taken in the sociologic as well as the economic success of the enterprise.
“With the present force and equipment forty-five cars per day can be loaded and shipped without difficulty and the full capacity of the plant is often taxed to the utmost.
“The output consists chiefly of bridge stone of three grades. The proprietor contracts for completed bridge piers and has a large force employed in their construction. Dressed dimension stone are cut in the yards and crush stone, rip-rap, rubble and curb stone are included in the products of the quarry.
“The quarries were opened in natural ledges fronting the river in the face of bluffs rising about 120 feet above the stream. These ledges have been quarried away over an area of several acres, and on the platform thus formed a pit 300 x 125 feet has been sunk to a depth of sixty feet below the level of the water in the river, and another of like dimensions has recently been opened. The lower ninety-four feet is used for bridge and dimension stone, the stone becoming of finer grain and better quality, it is said, with increasing depth to the preset quarry floor. Above this lies a ledge twenty-two feet thick used only for rip-rap, rubble, railway ballast, and macadam, for which it is admirably adapted. It includes hard, fine grained spalls, a four foot layer of hard, highly vesicular, crystalline limestone, and four feet of laminated limestone in layers from two to eight inches thick. On this ledge rests a bed of about twelve feet of soft earthy limestone, called the Coggan, wholly worthless for any industrial purpose, and constituting a part of the stripping.
“The quarry stone belongs to the Silarian system, Niagara series, and to a stage which the writer has called the Gower, from the township in which Bealer’s quarries are situated. Other things being equal, a geological formation is best named from the locality where its industrial uses are most fully developed, and the coincidence of scientific with commercial names is desirable whenever it can be obtained. Unfortunately in the present case the stage could not be termed the Cedar Valley after the village, since that name has already been applied to a stage of the Devonian. No locality in Iowa, whose name is at all available, so fully represents the different phases of this important formation as does Gower township, Cedar County.
“Of the Gower limestone there are several phases, representing different modes and circumstances of deposition. Most important of these is the phase quarried at Bealer’s, a laminated, light buff, granular, even bedded building stone. Nowhere in the state is it found of greater thickness or better suited to the purposes to which it is put. As a dolomite, it withstands chemical decay indefinitely, while its texture makes it resistant to frost to a high degree. So few are open bedding planes that in the dep pit mentioned there were found but two or three pervious to water. When this excavation was made it was put down in two pits separated by a wall of stone left for the time unquarried. One of these pits being left for a while unpumped, water stood in it twenty-five feet above the floor of the adjoining pit, and even under this head there was no seepage.
“In between the bedding planes this stone differs from many outcrops of the same formation. The rock, however, is laminated throughout and may be split along these planes to layers one foot in thickness without difficulty, and in places to eight and nine inches. On natural outcrops adjacent long weathered outcrops often show close lines of lamination, but these are strongly coherent, beyond the usual in this formation, and permit the quarrying of permanently solid blocks of as great thickness as called for. The common size of the blocks raised from the lower part of the quarry is six and one half feet long and three and one quarter feet wide and thick, weighing each something more than four tons.
“Rock of the highest excellence for the manufacture of lime is as broadly distributed over the county as is good building stone. * * * Thus, at Lime City and at Cedar Valley, lime and building stone quarries are in close proximity. * * * The lime burned in Cedar county is identical with that of the well known kilns at Racine and Port Byron. The large percent of carbonate of magnesia present makes it a cool lime, slow to set, slow to slack, and it is to such limes that architects, masons and plasterers now invariably give preference over the so-called hot limes burned from non-Magnesian limestone. The hardness and durability of mortars made from this lime approaches that of cement. Buildings are seen in which it was employed, where, after thirty-five years of weathering, the joints seem as fresh as when struck.
“The lime plant at Cedar Valley consists of three patent draw-kilns, each with a capacity of 120 barrels, and the usual storage and cooper sheds. Of the quarry face of sixty feet scarcely any is unavailable for lime, and the expense of stripping is inconsiderable. The rock is economically handled, and the lime is loaded on the cars. It has found a wide market over Iowa and the states adjacent to the west. Wood is employed for fuel, and is brought in from the heavily wooded hills of the Kansan upland on both sides of the river.”
To the foregoing finely descriptive article I am able to add little or nothing. It can only be said in addition that Cedar Valley is a busy place of 250 people, with a general store, postoffice and commodious school building. The quarries and a large part of the town are owned by Hon. E. J. C. Bealer of Cedar Rapids. His son, M. Y. Bealer, is the manager and resides in the town. A fine steel bridge spans the Cedar river at this point and there is much travel over it. The banks of the river there are frequently visited by picnic and camping parties.
