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Home > California > CA - Quarry Links & Photographs > El Dorado County > List of Quarries > Cothrin Station Through Garden Valley
“Henry Cowell Lime Company. It is reported that about 2 miles north of Cothrin station, on the Placerville branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad, the Henry Cowell Company owns and operates a large lime quarry and kilns. The lime is shipped from Cothrin station.
“Limestone is said to occur in small, isolated, lenticular masses in a number of places in the county. The limestones are thought by Mr. Lindgren to be of Carboniferous age.”*
(* Footnote: Sacramento, Folio No. 5, U. S. Geological Atlas.)
“Diamond Springs Lime Company. Homer P. Brown is general manager of the company, whose main office is at Diamond Springs. This modern lime plant was established in 1927 at Diamond Springs on the Placerville branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad. They do a general lime business supplying many grades of lime and lime hydrate, but during the war the larger part of the output was of high-calcium lime made from limestone produced at the mine of El Dorado Limestone Company near Shingle Springs. This was used principally by steel mills. They also operate a deposit of magnesian limestone in the SE ¼ NE ¼ sec. 28, T. 10 N., R. 11 E., from which the stone is sent to the plant over an aerial tramway 3 miles long, with 149 buckets of 800-pound capacity capable of delivering about 250 tons of rock to the plant in 8 hours. This deposit has been drilled to a depth of 600 feet. A Link-Belt electric shovel is used for stripping, digging, and loading limestone. A face up to 36 feet high is broken by drilling vertical holes with jackhammers using steel as much as 36 feet long, and blasting with 40 percent Trojan bag powder. One pound of powder is said to break 4 ½ tons of rock. The holes are spaced 10 feet apart in two staggered rows. When the height of the face exceeds 36 feet, horizontal holes are also drilled near the bottom. Limestone is loaded by electric shovel into trucks which deliver to the primary crusher. From this the stone goes by belt conveyor to the bins serving the aerial tramway.
“The flow sheet and tabular analysis included herewith were first published in Pit and Quarry, April 6, 1932; minor changes have been made for publication herein.
Figure 2. Flow sheet, Diamond Springs Lime Company plant, El Dorado County. Reprinted from State Mineralogist’s Report 34, p. 275, 1938. "The two Vulcan rotary kilns, each 8 by 125 feet, are driven at speeds of from 1/6 r.p.m. to 1/2 r.p.m. by 25-horsepower electric motors. They are inclined half an inch to 1 foot and have an average capacity of 3 1/4 tons an hour or 78 tons of lime a day each. Kiln temperature is about 1300 F. at the feed end and from 1800 to 2200 F. at the firing end. Fuel oil feed is controlled by valves with micrometer adjustment. Oil is fed at 225 pounds pressure and 280 F. Electric power at 60,000 volts comes over two lines to a special automatic sub-station adjoining the plant. Here it is stepped down to 11,000 volts then to 440 volts for plant and quarry use. Fuel oil and high-calcium limestone are brought in by rail.
Several grades of quicklime and lime hydrate are made. During the war about two-thirds of the chemical lime produced went to steel plants. Other important uses are in insecticides, water purification, paper and strawboard manufacture, and when gold quartz mining is active, it is used in the cyanide process. This lime is made from high-calcium limestone. The sales of chemical lime and chemical hydrate for agricultural use are relatively small.
"Building lime and building hydrate are made from the magnesian limestone. About 3 tons of quicklime is sold to every ton of hydrate for this use…."
| Plate 24. Diamond Springs Lime Company Plant - At Diamond Springs, El Dorado County. |  |
| Plate 25. Limestone Quarry - Diamond Springs Lime Company, El Dorado County. |  |
"Diamond Springs Lime Corporation. Location: The plant is in sec. 24, T. 10 N., R. 10 E., M. D., at Diamond Springs; the quarry is in sec. 28, T. 10 N., R. 11 E., M. D., 3 miles to the east. Ownership: Diamond Springs Lime Corporation, Diamond Springs, H. C. Green, manager.
| Figure 25. Limestone quarry of the Diamond Springs Lime Company. Camera facing west. |  |
| Figure 24. Diamond Springs Lime Company plant. |  |
"This company operates a lime plant that was erected in 1927 (Logan, 1938, p. 274). Various grades of lime and quicklime are produced for use in steel mills, the building industry, and agriculture. Aggregate material, road metal, and asphalt mix are by-products.
"Most of the limestone used in the plant is imported from El Dorado Limestone Company at Shingle Springs and the California Rock and Gravel Company at Cool. Limestone from these two concerns is shipped in by truck or rail and dumped into an underground bunker. From here, it is delivered by clamshell bucket to a storage shed, then screened. As the size required for kilns averages ¾ of an inch to 1 ½ inches, oversize stone is sent by belt conveyor to a jaw crusher. Undersize is stockpiled and sold as aggregate or is sent to a hot plant on the property for use in the manufacture of asphalt mix.
"From the storage shed, the limestone is belt-conveyed to bins which supply the kilns. From the bins, the limestone goes by belt feeders to two oil-fired 8- by 125-foot inclined rotary kilns. As the limestone from the two suppliers have different physical characteristics, only one type is burned at a time (H. D. Green, personal communication, 1955). A precipitator at the head of the conveyor belt collects much of the dust.
"Lime from the kilns goes through two 4- by 48-foot coolers under the kilns and then by pan conveyor and bucket elevator to two bins. From these bins it is sent by a screw conveyor and more bucket elevators either to a hydrator or to a rolling mill for fine grinding. Some of the lime is sent to a recently installed unit consisting of a slaker, drier, and tube mill for the production of 'Marvel,' a trade name for a high-calcium lime of minus 100-mesh size. In the summer, when the company-owned quarry is in operation, 7 percent magnesian lime is produced.
"The various finished products are sent to storage bins. Material from the storage bins is bagged or bulk-loaded into railroad cars and trucks for shipment. About half of the finished product is sold to steel plants in the San Francisco Bay area as fluxing material (H. C. Green, personal communication, 1955). Another major consumer is the building industry, in which lime is used for manufacturing plaster, stucco, and mortar. Smaller amounts are used in agriculture and the chemical industry.
"The limestone deposit, 3 miles east of the plant, is mined during the summer. A limestone lens, which is about 2,500 feet long and as much as 500 feet wide, occurs in metasedimentary rocks of the Calaveras group. It strikes north and has a vertical dip. Jointing is common. The limestone is fine-grained and ranges from white to bluish-gray in color.
"The stone is quarried in 30-foot benches with wagon drills and jackhammers. The broken stone is loaded by power shovel into dump trucks and delivered to a primary jaw crusher. From the jaw crusher, it goes to conveyor belt to storage bins that serve the aerial tramway. This tramway, 3 miles long, uses 149 buckets of 800 pounds capacity each and can deliver as much as 30 tons an hour to the plant."
| Photo 1. Diamond Springs limestone quarry, El Dorado County. |  |
"The production of limestone and limestone products is now (circa 1966) the largest segment of the mineral industry in the Sierra Nevada, amounting to 10's of millions of dollars a year. Crystalline limestone and dolomite, the basic source rocks, occur as lenses in various types of metamorphic rocks and granitic rock. Although the age of most of the limestone deposits is not known, a few of them have yielded fossils ranging from Mississippian to Permian in age. The limestone usually is white to blue-gray in color, and fairly pure. The largest masses are in the Sonora-Columbia area of Tuolumne County, but extensive deposits are in Plumas, El Dorado, Amador, Calaveras, Mariposa, Kern, and Tulare Counties. The principal districts producing commercial limestone at present (circa 1966) area at Cool, Shingle Springs, and Diamond Springs, El Dorado County, where most of it is used in beet sugar refining or the manufacture of lime; San Andreas, Calaveras County, where it is quarried for cement by the Calaveras Cement Co.; Columbia and Sonora, Tuolumne County, where terrazzo stone and lime are made, and Tehachapi, Kern County, the site of the Monolith Cement Co. operation. At one time limestone was quarried near Briceburg, Mariposa County, for use in a cement plant in Merced County…."
(Operator) Diamond Springs Lime Corp. (producer of burnt lime, industrial limestone, and agricultural lime); (Address) Box 409, Diamond Springs; (Location) Diamond Springs.
"The Diamond Springs Limestone Mine is a large limestone quarry three miles to the east of Diamond Springs, on Quarry Road. Limestone has been mined at this location since at least the days of the Gold Rush, if not earlier. Within the structure of the Washington Monument, in Washington D.C. the Great State of California is represented by a block of limestone donated from this quarry over a hundred years ago. When this limestone lens, some 2,500 feet long and as much as 500 feet wide was owned by the Diamond Springs Lime Company, the material was mined and shipped to their processing plant just north of the townsite (now the location of the refuse transfer station) by a unique (and sometimes noisy) overhead tramway. The three mile long aerial tramway had 149 buckets of 800 pound capacity each, that could supply the plant with as much as 30 tons per hour. Where the tramway passed over roads, they were protected from falling rock by a steel mesh cover. The tramway was disassembled around 1954."
"With the tramway gone, the Diamond Springs Lime Plant started getting most of its material from mines in Shingle Springs and Cool. When the federal government purchased the part of the mine in Cool from which their material came, the lime plant was unable to find another suitable source and closed. The Diamond Mine, which is developed by a large open pit, continues to operate, providing high grade limestone for the roadbuilding, agriculture, and pharmaceutical industries, among others."
"El Dorado Limestone Company. Location: sec. 15 and 22, T. 9 N., R. 9 E., M. D., 3 miles southwest of Shingle Springs. Ownership: El Dorado Limestone Company, Shingle Springs, California, J. H. Bell, president; C. R. Nichols, general manager; and F. G. DeBerry, Mine superintendent.
| Figure 26. El Dorado Limestone Company - headframe with hoist house to right, crushing and sizing plant to left. Camera facing east. |  |
"The El Dorado Limestone Company produces high-calcium limestone for various uses. Finished material is used in the manufacture of lime, by steel mills, glass manufacturers, in beet-sugar refining, and in construction materials."The present concern, which was formed in 1931, is a successor to El Dorado Lime and Minerals Company, which began mining the deposit in 1918 (Logan, 1947, p. 230). Prior to that date, limestone was quarried just north of the mine. This was burned in nearby stone lime kilns and the lime used for building purposes. Ruins of these old lime kilns may still be seen (circa 1956).
"The limestone has an even, medium- to coarse-grained texture. It is mostly grayish-white in color, although some gray limestone is present. Jointing is prominent, the principal joint planes dipping both north and south. All of the limestone is high in calcium and low in silica and magnesium. Sixty-seven carloads shipped to one user averaged 97.65 percent CaCo3 and 0.24 percent SiO2 (Logan, 1947, p. 231).
"The main working entry is a 1,000-foot three-compartment vertical shaft sunk near the east wall of the east lens. The deepest workings are on the 800-foot level. Crosscuts extend from the shaft stations to the west lens. No timbering is required. Good ventilation is facilitated by a raise connecting the 150-foot level with the surface south of the shaft, a raise from this level to the old quarry north of the shaft, and numerous raises that connect the lower levels.
"For many years shrinkage stopes have been employed in the mine. The main haulageways are drifts about 20 feet wide and 8 feet high that have been driven north and south from the shaft stations in both the east and west lenses. In developing a stope, short crosscuts are driven perpendicularly from the main haulageways; the ends of these are used as drawpoints and are connected by ore chutes to the bottoms of the stopes at the sides. The bottoms of the stopes have an inverted V-shape so the loose rock flows down ore chutes to the drawpoints. The lowest parts of the stopes are about 12 feet above the level of the roofs of the drifts.
| Figure 26. El Dorado Limestone Company - headframe with hoist house to right, crushing and sizing plant to left. Camera facing east. | |
| Figure 27. Cross-section of shrinkage stope at El Dorado Limestone Company limestone mine. |  |
"Gardner Denver drifters and liners and 30 percent ammonia dynamite are used for drilling and blasting. The rock is drilled and blasted in 5-foot slices in the stopes. Broken rock is drawn from the ore chutes and is allowed to pile at the end of the crosscuts. Track-mounted Eimco mucking machines in the short crosscuts load the broken rock into a 3 ½-ton ore car in the haulageway. Occasionally large chunks are blasted in the haulageways The rock is delivered to the loading pockets at the shaft station where the larger pieces are broken on the grizzlies with sledge hammers.
"Limestone is mined in stopes in both lenses on the 650-foot level. North and south drifts are being driven on the 800-foot level, preparatory to the development of new stopes between that level and the 650-foot level. When the stopes have been mined up to the level above, the remaining pillars on that level also are mined out. Completed stopes reach maximum dimensions of 300 feet in height, 600 feet in length, and 70 feet in width. The limestone is mined to within a few feet of the wall rock.
"Limestone is hoisted in 2-ton skips and deposited in a 200-ton silo-type bin mounted on the 100-foot steel headframe. From the bin, the rock passes by gravity through a Kue-Ken crusher, vibrating screens, and trommels. During this process, the material is hand picked on conveyor belts to remove fragments containing schist or dike rock. Sized material is delivered to separate bins from which it can be loaded into railroad cars or trucks. Some of the coarser material is stacked in yard stockpiles. The company has 1.9 miles of spur track which connects with the Southern Pacific Railroad.
"The most important of the finished products are stone used in the manufacture of lime, roofing gravel, material used in glass-making plants, and sugar rock. The stone used in lime manufacturing is shipped the Diamond Springs Lime Company, Diamond Springs. Sugar rock is sent to beet-sugar refineries in the Sacramento-Stockton area. Other products are fluxing material for open-hearth steel furnaces and filler material used in the manufacture of paints and linoleum. Agricultural limestone also is produced."
"Larkin Mine. For many years this old gold mine in sec. 29, T. 10 N., R. 11 E., 1 mile east of Diamond Springs, has been listed as having a 'large vein of dolomite'. (See Eakle, A. S. 23, p. 130,* and Pabst, A. 38, p. 146;** in both of these the name is mis-spelt 'Laskin'). This vein is 42 feet wide at the surface where it crosses the county road. It forms a part of the Mother Lode vein system here and in several other properties where serpentine is nearby. In this case, and in similar occurrences so far as have been observed, the dolomite is too impure to be commercially valuable (except where found to be a gold ore). It shows a rusty color on the outcrops due to oxidation of the pyrite it contains. In this case it also shows considerable talc and silica, and these impurities are quite generally present where the dolomite vein occurs."
(*Arthur S. Eakle, Minerals of California, California Mining Bureau Bulletin 91, 328 pp., 1923.)
(**Adolf Pabst, Minerals of California, California Division of Mines Bulletin 113, 344 pp., 1938.)
"Just above Lotus, after crossing the South Fork of the American River, about a mile and a half below the spot where James Marshall discovered gold in 1848, one sees to the left the splendid two story stone ruin of Meyer's Dance Hall and Saloon (Fig. 137). The walls are of granite fieldstone or river boulders split so as to furnish a flat facing. The corners, door and window frames are of dressed rhyolite tuff blocks. Source of this tuff was probably to the south in the vicinity of Diamond Springs...."
"Just north of Auburn in sec. 3, T 12 N., R. 8 E., M.D.M., is the Burton deposit which is composed of light gray, fine-to-medium-grained limestone…."
The following information is taken from "Table 1. Limestone deposits in the general area of the Cool-Cave Valley limestone," (circa 1954) on pages 462 and 463:
(No. on map, Plate 3) 4; (Deposit) Burton (Petterson); (Owner) O. J. Burton, Route 3, Box 3350, Auburn; (Location) Sec. 3, T. 12 N., R. 8 E., M.D.; (References) Logan 27:282; 47:263.
Mine name: Diamond Quarry; Operator: Loring Brunius; Address & County: 1845 Quarry Rd., Placerville, CA 95667, El Dorado County; Phone: (916) 622-8571; Latitude: 38.69, Longitude: -120.76, and Mine location number: Map No. 61; Mineral commodity: Limestone.
Several stone quarries have been operated by the El Dorado County Road Department (later the Public Works and now Department of Transportation. These stone quarries are deposits of decomposed granite and one of serpentine.
| Fig. 16. Mine buildings of the United States Lime Products Company lime plant at El Dorado. Photo by Olaf P. Jenkins. (From Geologic Guidebook Along Highway 49 - Sierran Gold Belt: The Mother Lode Country, Bulletin 141, Olaf P. Jenkins, Chief, California Division of Mines, San Francisco, California, 1949. Used with permission, California Department of Conservation, California Geological Survey.) |  |
Mine name: Weber Quarry; Operator: Loring Brunius; Address & County: 1845 Quarry Rd., Placerville, CA 95667; Phone: (916) 622-8571; Latitude: 38.74, Longitude: -120.93, and Mine location number: Map No. 65; Mineral commodity: Stone.
"Slug Gulch (Cosumnes) Deposit. Location: secs. 24, 25, 26, T. 9 N., R. 12 E., M. D., by the Middle Fork of the Cosumnes River, 3 miles northeast of Fairplay. Ownership: Clifford Smith, Somerset.
"This limestone deposit crops out for a distance of 1 ½ miles in a northeast direction from Slug Gulch to north of Rocky Bar on the Cosumnes River. It is lensoid and has an average width of several hundred feet. The limestone is medium- to coarse-grained in texture and ranges from white to bluish-gray in color. Other than the quarrying of a small amount of limestone at the north end for use as road metal, there has been no work on the deposit (Lee Miller, personal communication, 1955). The deposit is accessible by several dirt roads, one of which extends east from Fairplay to the Cosumnes copper mine, which is just west of the deposit."
This deposit was located "by the Middle Fork of the Cosumnes River, three miles north of the town of Fair Play. The deposit outcrops for a distance of one and one-half miles from Slug Gulch to Rocky Bar and has an average width of several hundred feet."
"Hummingbird Ranch was the name of a serpentine quarry one mile west of Garden Valley."
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