Excerpts from "Marmor, Stein und Eisen" by Birgit Hirschmann, August 1999: The marble industry in Vermont In 1768 the first colonists noted that what they had thought were snow banks was actually white rocks of Dorset seam. Marble was at first cut for tombstones and hearths from the surface with hammer and chisel. Mining then intensified after the development of the first settlements. In 1784 Isaac Underhill set up in Dorst, what was probably the first commercial marble quarry in North America. Using their simple tools,the colonialists struggled to produce marble for lintels, windowsills, fireplaces, and marble basins. The first technical assistance came about in 1805 with the invention of "gang saw" and the "channelling machine", enabling larger blocks to be mined and worked. Several marble quarries sprang up at this time along the marble vein that runs from the North to the South of Vermont, most notably in Rutland, Sutherland Falls (Proctor), Florence, Brandon, and Middlebury. One of the first big commisons came in 1837, the Untied States Bank Building in Erie,PA, known as the "Old Custom House". Ox and horse drawn carts and sledges were used to transport the five-ton blocks to Whitehall, a distance of some 30 miles. From there the marble was shipped over the Hudson to Albany, then via the Erie channel to Buffalo and finally over the Great Lake to Erie. The marble quarries in West Rutland Marble was already mined by 1807 in West Rutland, at the True Blue Quarry in Chippenhook. The Vermont Marble Company began here commercial in 1844 with the "tunnelling form" of marble extraction and working. The gigantic blocks were cut down with diamond saws or continually moving narrow steel bands. The mill ran day and night, while the quarries were operated in shifts. Cranes with booms made from 90 foot high Georgian pine lifted 40 ton blocks from a depth of over 100 feet. The work face was some distance from the main entrance in the West Rutland hillside, where quarries extend beneath ground for more than five acres. History of West Rutland The first settlers in West Rutland were farmers and a few tradesmen from Connecticut and Massachusetts. In 1840 there were only 20 dwellings in West Rutland, however by the 1850's the marble industry began to flourish. The marble companies built houses and tenements for the workers, most of whom would move away seasonally when the quarries shut down for the winter. Between 1870 and 1880 as the marble industry boomed, the population climbed rapidly from 1,600 people living in West Rutland to over 3,000. In November 1886 West Rutland was incorporated as a town. Later, there were a total of nine churches in WR, forming the social centres for the community. Currently there are three churches, which are considered of historical interest. By 1885 the quarries employed about 3,000 workers. In 1890, the population was 3,680, comprising mostly English, Irish, French, Italian, Swedish, Polish, and a few Jewish families. After the recession of the Vermont Marble Company, Stanley Gawet in 1978 bought the entire Vermont Marble Company property located in West Rutland. The major decline in the population occured between 1930-1950, a decrease of nearly a 1,000 people in 20 years, due mainly to the closing of many of the marble quarries.
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