Texas Rock Quarry
I recently joined a little get-together to do a photographic visit to a local rock quarry — named the Martin Marietta Texas Quarry, though it’s actually not in Texas, but in Baltimore County, MD. The area was first mined by Irish miners, some of whom fought in Texas during the Mexican-American war in mid 1800s, and named it that, we learned.
Our guide was the very enthusiastic Trevor, who was a wealth of knowledge about the history of the quarry. For example, much of the Washington Monument in DC is sheathed in marble that came from here. And the “lake” at the bottom of it is constantly pumped out (water stored for other uses), otherwise if left to its own devices it would fill up the entire quarry in a month! The quarry has approximately 45 years more to go, apparently, and then the lake will be left to fill it up and will become the 2nd largest drinking water source for the county.
We couldn’t go down into the quarry itself and just had a vista point to shoot from. As I could tell that the morning sun was rapdily changing to an angle of light that would be less and less favorable to casting shadows and showing the formations of the rock, I kept rudely shooting while Trevor was talking.
Click images to enlarge.
