From the Ohio River in Harrison and Floyd Counties, a belt of limestone extends northwest through Monroe County, as far as Montgomery and Fountain Counties.^[2] The limestone formation was deposited in the Mississippian Period, about 340 million years ago, when a shallow inland sea covered the present-day Indiana.^[3]

Limestone from Monroe, Lawrence, and Owen counties is a sturdy but workable building material. Found relatively close to the surface, extraction is easier here than in other parts of the state and country, where bedrock had been buried beneath thick deposits of glacial till.^[4] The rock was first termed “Oolitic Limestone” during a geological reconnaissance in the 1830s.^[5] Since 1901, the stone has been called “Salem Limestone.”^[6]

Early settlers gathered local  limestone to build the foundations or piers upon which their cabins rested while others constructed entire houses of stone. Hillside limestone outcrops and stream-bed deposits provided good sources for small-scale extraction.^[7] One of the few remaining examples, Daniel Stout’s I-house was constructed in 1828 of limestone gathered from the hills near Stout’s Creek, a creek that bears his name. Today, the Daniel Stout House located along modern Maple Grove Road, near Bloomington is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.^[8] In nearby Greene County, Alexander Gilmore hired stone mason Nathaniel Lynch to dress and construct a one-and one-half story limestone residence in 1870 near Taylor Ridge.^[9] By the twenty-first century, sadly, the Gilmore House was in ruins, though a scattering of dressed and squared limestone remains.

Locally gathered stone  soon gave way to a rapidly expanding limestone industry in the late- nineteenth century, thanks to railroads, new extraction and finishing technologies, and the popularity of the Beaux Arts architectural style, which emphasized light-colored stone facades.^[10]

William Bybee, president of the Bybee Stone Company, explains how the expansion of railroads created a bigger market for stone mills and operations that cut and finished stone before sending it to a building site:

Rail was being put in all through the late-19th century, and it made a form of transportation that allowed cut stone plants to come into being as opposed to just sending block to the project. Biltmore over in North Carolina—they took the block from the quarries here and did all the processing on-site. I don’t know if you have seen the Biltmore mansion but it is a pretty incredible piece of work. It was all done on site, but that was one of the last buildings probably that was approached like that because fabrication plants from around the turn of the 19^th century and into the 20^th were just flying up, all sorts, and they were getting bigger. Mainly I think it was because of the availability of the trains and the rail.

In addition to the opulent Biltmore Mansion referenced by Bybee, other noteworthy buildings were constructed or faced with stone extracted from Indiana’s quarries or dressed and finished in Indiana’s mills. Buildings of renown, such as the Grand Central Station in New York City, the Tribune Tower in Chicago, the Empire State Building, and the Pentagon were all constructed with Salem limestone.^[12]

Trains traversing Monroe County carried the massive limestone blocks from the quarries to mills and building sites across the nation. The Illinois Central Railroad constructed a wooden trestle to create a spur to the Victor Oolitic Stone Company sometime around 1910; this trestle is still visible from Victor Pike. Over the next two decades, Victor became a “hive” of activity with an active quarry and mill encompassed by worker and owner homes, a company store, and a school.^[13]

The opening of limestone mills and the rapid expansion of quarrying operations in the area, created a high demand for workers. Stone laborers were typically unskilled farmers from the surrounding area who alternated between quarry work and farm labor to make ends meet due to the poor pay and seasonal nature of stone work.^[14] One commentator compared a stone worker’s pay to a “starvation wage in the city,” but noted that workers could “afford a comfortable living” because of the low cost of living around mills and quarries.^[15]

Several mills and quarries opened in the 1920s and early 1930s, including Indian Hill Stone Mill Company, Fluck Mill Stone Company, Independent Limestone, Maple Hill, Monon Stone Company, and Shawnee Stone Company. As the industry continued to expand, quarry operations needed more laborers. Stone companies began to attract foreign-born workers. Many of these laborers and some stone carvers, including Italians, Greeks, and Hungarians, settled in working class neighborhoods located near quarries and mills. Workers often gathered into temporary “multi-worker households” to reduce living costs.^[16] The influence of European carvers remains visible within the city of Bloomington, where homes in the Vinegar Hill Historic District (NRHP, 2005) feature designs by these carvers that “have a distinctly Mediterranean flavor.”^[17]

Production fell from the 1922 high of 9.6 million cubic feet to 3.5 million cubic feet in 1935.^[18] From 1934 to 1941, limestone’s use in public buildings dropped significantly, especially after the federal government’s New Deal Public Works Administration adopted a resolution in 1935 requiring the use of local materials in federal building projects.^[19] Mills and other buildings converted to wartime production during World War II or simply closed. ^[20]

As limestone buildings fell out of favor, a post-World War II housing boom boosted Indiana’s limestone industry.  Dimension stone companies began producing “split-faced” stone—thinly cut limestone used as veneer on ranch houses. Limestone veneer, popular in the 1950s fell out of favor in the late sixties as the popularity of modern architecture created less demand for limestone. Indiana’s limestone industry declined as a result in those years as a result.^[21]

The durability and permanence of Salem Limestone’s buildings and monuments has transcended economic fluctuations, changing design, and buildings trends. Pat Fell-Barker, the longtime president of the B.G. Hoadley Quarries in Bloomington, describes the importance of limestone in the built environment:

We really respected the material, and we knew it would be standing, that’s what I think of. Just like when you see the Sequoia Trees in California, think how long they have been and what a great respect they have because they haven’t been touched, the Grand Canyon. Well, to me natural building products should have the same respect…

And it was to the Bloomington limestone industry that the Department of Defense turned after a hijacked airplane crashed into the western side of the Pentagon during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Local limestone companies proudly responded with production that helped to rebuild the Pentagon.

In limestone rich areas, like Lawrence and Monroe Counties, stacked stone blocks and waste piles define local roads and road cuts reveal the layers of limestone beneath the surface. And, quarry derricks break above the tree lines as testament to earlier operations. Stone along local roadways and majestic buildings in prominent cities testify to the presence of Indiana’s limestone industry in creating “the building fabric of America.”^[22]

[1] Steven Visher, “The Indiana Oolitic Limestone Industry,” Economic Geography 7:1 (January 1931), 58.

[2] John B. Patton and Donald D. Carr, The Salem Limestone in the Indiana Building-Stone District, Department of Natural Resources Geological Survey Occasional Paper, vol. 38 (Bloomington, IN: Department of Natural Resources, 1982), 4.

[3] Weintraut & Associates, Inc., “Dimension Limestone Industry in the Bloomington, Indiana area, circa 1816-1967,” National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form (Washington D.C.: National Park Service, 2019), 3.

[4]Weintraut & Associates, Inc., “Dimension Limestone Industry,” 3.

[5] T.C. Hopkins and C.E. Siebenthal, “The Bedford Oolitic Limestone of Indiana,” in Indiana Department of Geology and Natural Resources Annual Report 21 (Indianapolis: Department of Geology and Natural Resources, 1896), see notes on 298.

[6] Patton and Carr, The Salem Limestone in the Indiana Building-Stone District, 7.

[7] Patton and Carr, The Salem Limestone in the Indiana Building-Stone District, 10. Examples of limestone pieces in stream beds occur in several places in southern Indiana, such as Dearborn County, where early English settlement homes, retaining walls, and culverts are all constructed of stone from nearby water sources.  See: Dearborn County Interim Report, especially York Township, and Weintraut & Associates, “Historic Property Report: Collier Ridge Road over West Fork Tanner’s Creek, CSX Railroad to Bonnell Road” (Prepared for FHWA/INDOT, August 2011).

[8] Mrs. Hubert A. Brown, National Register of Historic Places Inventory—Nomination Form for the Daniel Stout House, Bloomington, Indiana (on file at the Indiana State Historic Preservation Office, Indianapolis, 1973), Sect. 7, accessed via State Historic and Archaeological Research Database (SHAARD), https://secure.in.gov/apps/dnr/shaard/welcome.html.

[9] I-69 Evansville to Indianapolis Tier 2 Studies, Historic Property Report, Section 4, US 231 to SR 37, Prepared for Federal Highway Administration and Indiana Department of Transportation, 179-180.

[10] Patton and Carr, The Salem Limestone in the Indiana Building-Stone District, 6.

[11] “A Walk Through the Monroe County Courthouse,” tour brochure (City of Bloomington and Monroe County Convention and Visitors Bureau, 2002), accessed October 16, 2019, https://bloomington.in.gov/sites/default/files/2017-05/courthouse_walking_tour.pdf; Weintraut & Associates, Indiana’s Statehouse, (Indiana Historical Bureau, 2000), 11; “In Clear Arrangement,” State of Indiana website, accessed October 16, 2019, https://www.in.gov/idoa/2434.htm; “Soldiers and Sailors Monument,” State of Indiana website, accessed October 16, 2019, https://www.in.gov/iwm/2335.htm.

[12] “Limestone – Frequently Asked Questions,” Visit Bloomington, accessed December 6, 2016, https://www.visitbloomington.com/limestone/faq/.