Rock of Ages Corporation facts for kids
Rock of Ages Corporation is a famous company in Graniteville, Vermont, that works with granite. It was started way back in 1885. The company is known for digging granite out of the ground in a process called quarrying. It also cuts and polishes the stone so it can be used for buildings and monuments.
In 2016, Rock of Ages was bought by a Canadian company called Polycor. This deal made the new combined company the biggest producer of marble and granite in North America.
The E. L. Smith Quarry
Rock of Ages runs the world's largest "deep-hole" granite quarry. This means it's a very deep pit dug into the earth to get the stone. The quarry is named the "E. L. Smith Quarry."
The stone they dig up here is a special type called Barre Granite. This granite formed during the Devonian Period, hundreds of millions of years ago!
How Granite is Quarried
Long ago, workers used older methods to get granite out of the quarry. They used hand saws and sometimes even explosives to break large pieces of rock away from the quarry walls.
Today, the methods are much more modern and precise. Workers use special tools like diamond-tipped wire saws. They also use powerful jets of water that can cut through the hard stone. If you visit, you can watch the workers as they cut huge blocks of granite from the quarry.
Famous Works
The granite from Rock of Ages has been used for many important projects. One famous example is a sculpture at the United States Korean War Memorial. This memorial is located in the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Busan, South Korea. The sculpture was carved from Barre Granite by the artist Frank Gaylord.
On Television
Rock of Ages was featured in a 2005 documentary on the American TV channel PBS. The show was called A Cemetery Special and looked at businesses related to cemeteries.
