Just as Hershey, Pa., is known for its chocolate, the town of Lyons is associated with its popular pink sandstone, a historian said Tuesday during a program at the Fort Morgan Museum.
"It's the only place in the world that you'll find this exact sandstone," said Kathleen Spring, a guest speaker from the Lyons Historical Society, during the January installment of the monthly Brown Bag Luncheon.
The town of Lyons was founded in 1880 between Longmont and Estes Park in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, Spring said.
The history of the historic Lyons Sandstone Quarry began the same year, she said, when E.S. Lyon traveled to the area looking for gold. Although he didn't find what he was looking for, she said, Lyon found a range of cliffs with giant outcroppings of sandstone.
"You could actually see these slates of stone sticking out," she said.
Since Lyon had some experience in Massachusetts rock quarries, Spring said, he quickly assembled a crew and began harvesting the Colorado sandstone.
The rock in Lyons is not crumbly like most sandstone, Spring said, but is hard and impervious to rain.
"There's buildings around that are 300 years old that look like they were built this year," she said. "It remains in its perfect state for a long period of time."
After realizing that a horse and wagon could only move a limited amount of sandstone, she said, Lyon began working to bring a railroad through the area. An influential man from England eventually secured a rail line through Lyons, she said, which brought 75 trains a day during its boom days.
Most early quarry workers were from Finland and Sweden, Spring said. After establishing themselves in the area, she said, the immigrants would save enough money to bring more family members to work in the quarries.
"That's how the area got populated, and the town really was booming at that time," she said.
Immigrants from Mexico later moved to the area in the 1950s and took over some abandoned huts, Spring said. They would often cover the caved roofs with corrugated metal, she said.
Although business was booming at this time, she said, working in the rock quarries was not easy. Because the rocks drew heat from the sun, she said, the workers often started work early and quit at noon to avoid the heat of the day.
Additionally, she said, some quarry workers died in their 50s from inhaling rock dust generated by the work.
The sandstone business all but died when cement was invented in 1912, Spring said. Cement often replaced the pink sandstone that was once shipped all over the country to be used for curbs, sidewalks, building exteriors and roads.
"People didn't want these bumpy, rocky roads anymore," she said.
However, Spring said, the University of Colorado at Boulder kept the Lyons quarry workers in business at the time when school officials decided to homogenize the campus architecture. The university bought large quantities of the local sandstone to install on the exteriors of all campus buildings, she said.
"That's why the campus today is all the same color," she said.
Although the sandstone business was slow for about 30 years, Spring said, it picked up in 1946 when the pinkish sandstone again came into style.
Homeowners in the 1950s wanted very thin slabs of sandstone to use as a veneer, she said, which prompted quarry officials to seek a better way to cut the rocks. After some searching, she said, a machine was found that upped production from about three tons per day to 25 tons a day.
"It just made the industry go crazy after that," she said.
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