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Home > Delaware
“Fine-grained mafic and felsic gneiss, interlayered at the decimeter scale. The mafic layers contain plagioclase, pyroxene and hornblende, and are commonly boudinaged. The felsic layers contain quartz, feldspar and less than 10% pyroxene. Original igneous textures are obscured by a penetrative foliation and granulite metamorphism. The body of Rockford Park Gneiss at the highpoint is surrounded by the Brandywine Blue Gneiss, which is overall more felsic. Foliation dips moderately to steeply northwest....”
“The Hagley Museum about 2 miles northwest of downtown Wilmington (circa 1967) displays early colonial American industries including gunpowder making. Through the firm, then known as Dupont and Co., Wilmington became the center of American Powdermaking early in the 1800’s. Dupont black blasting powder found a ready market in the growing mining industry and in the building of roads and canals.
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National Geologic Map Database, presented by the United States Geologic Survey.
“The Architecture of the Granite Shed,” By Paul Wood, November 5, 2007, in the Barre Montpelier Times Argus. (New England States: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.)
All quarrying will be found (except for sand) in northern New Castle County. It is contained in a fifteen by ten mile area that features two gabbro plutons. In the 19th and 20th centuries Gabbro and related basalts and gneiss was quarried for building and curbing. Two of the major quarries are located in what are now state parks. Hagley museum keeps a small quarry open as an exhibit on historic industry, and in the Winterthur Museum a quarry was turned into a garden on the grounds.
“The Architecture of the Granite Shed,” By Paul Wood, November 5, 2007, in the Barre Montpelier Times Argus. (New England States: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.)
(The following list of Delaware quarries is not a complete list of all of the historical quarries in the state, only the ones I have been able to locate. If you know of more historical quarries in Delaware, please contact me. Peggy B. Perazzo )
“DURING the years 1837 and 1838, Prof. Jas C. Booth, in accordance with an act of the State Legislature, made a geological survey of Delaware, the results of which were published in a report that appeared in 1841....”
“The Archean area of the State can be divided into two nearly equal areas. First, a southern club-shaped area of eruptive gabbros and hyperites with associated amphibole rocks, and Second, an upper elliptical area of softer micaceous gneisses and schists.
“Almost the whole of Brandywine Hundred, and the southern half of Christiana Hundred are covered by the rocks of the first class. To the west of Brandywine Springs these rocks, however, taper out into a narrow belt of not over a quarter of a mile in width, which runs along the southern limit of the Archean to beyond Newark.
“Another interesting development of the same rocks occurs to the southwest of Red Mills, and thence to the well-known elevations called Iron and Chestnut Hills. The typical hypersthenic gabbro or hyperite of the club-shaped area just described is represented by the so-called " Brandywine granite," which is quarried to such an extensive degree in the neighborhood of Wilmington. It is a rock of dark bluish gray or bluish black color of great hardness and firmness, and is without doubt one of the most valuable and durable stones in existence.**
(Footnote **: Bulletin, No. 41, U.S. Geological Survey, Washington.
“This rock has been studied in detail by the writer, and from its wide variation in composition and structural characters is of peculiar interest. The rock, as studied under the microscope, is found to consist of a granular mixture of hypersthene, diallage plagioclase feldspar (labradorite), with accessory quartz, biotite hornblende, magnetite, pyrite and apatite.
“The most remarkable fact observed in the study of these rocks is the intimate association of highly schistose black hornblende rock with these massive gray gabbros. The black hornblende rock is, after past microscopic studies, found to be but an extreme stage of variation affecting to a greater or less degree the whole gabbro mass. Hornblende, which is the true gabbro is but a rare or accessory constituent, is found to increase in amount until the hypersthene rock passes into a nearly pure hornblende feldspar rock, which from its schistose or banded structure makes it a hornblende gneiss. In the same way it is found that the true gabbros occur in all stages of transition into rocks distinctly granitic in character, or more nearly like many of the European norites or the trap granulites of Saxony .
“The massive gabbros, best exposed in the extensive quarries of Brandywine Hundred, are entirely massive in structure, or with an entire absence of those planes of bedding which characterize sedimentary deposits. All evidence obtained in the field and with the microscope confirms the belief that they are truly eruptive, and that the rock was at one time in a more or less molten state, in which condition it was probably forced up through the older mica schists which lie to the north and which also lie buried to the south beneath younger clays of the cretaceous. The banded or schistose structure prevalent in the associated hornblende rocks proves also that the rocks of this gabbro belt have been subjected to great pressure, a pressure which the microscope shows was great enough to flatten and elongate certain of the mineral constituents of the rock and to crush others into fragments....”
“Associated with the softer slaty micaceous rocks are probably intrusive masses of coarse grained granite, which vary in thickness for several inches up to many feet. These granites often become so highly feldspathic as to possess considerable economic value, inasmuch as the feldspar frequently becomes decomposed into Kaolin.
“The celebrated deposits around Hockessin are of this character. Dixon ’s quarry near Wilmington has produced very fine yields of feldspar. A very notable vein cuts across the road leading up the Brandywine, about one and a half miles from the head of the State. Its width is about twenty feet, and the material a mixture of red orthoclase albite, blue quartz and muscovite. The rock is quarried for the valuable feldspar, used in the manufacture of artificial teeth....”
"The Brandywine Granite Co., one of the largest and best known stone companies in the South, has decided to close its plant on the Brandywine, in Delaware, and go out of business. Recently the company was compelled to pay $9,000 damages to an Italian who was injured by a premature blast at its quarries. The directors of the company declare that under the decision of the court a company engaged in a hazardous business cannot continue operations in Delaware. The quarries are now being cleaned up and the machinery will be sold."
“Enjoy an interpretive hike from White Clay Creek State Park Nature Center to Millstone Pond to explore a long-deserted quarry. Hidden away in a rock outcropping is an old production site for millstones.”
Rockford Park Gneiss, Wilmington Complex (bedrock) at Tower Hill, Delaware, presented by the Delaware Geological Survey.
“Fine-grained mafic and felsic gneiss, interlayered at the decimeter scale. The mafic layers contain plagioclase, pyroxene and hornblende, and are commonly boudinaged. The felsic layers contain quartz, feldspar and less than 10% pyroxene. Original igneous textures are obscured by a penetrative foliation and granulite metamorphism. The body of Rockford Park Gneiss at the highpoint is surrounded by the Brandywine Blue Gneiss, which is overall more felsic. Foliation dips moderately to steeply northwest....”
Atlas Powder Company
Wilmington, Delaware
Atlas Non-Freezing
will not freeze – eliminates thawing and heartaches
In the most exhaustive tests in both laboratory and field, this new explosive – Atlas Non-Freezing – has withstood the lowest temperatures known to man. It has been used for all explosive requirements and its efficiency has been fully proved in quarries, pits and mines; in rock, earth and ore – all at temperatures varying from that of torrid to the coldest found in the land of perpetual snows.
Atlas Non-Freezing has the same stability and uniformity that characterize other Atlas high explosives. It will not explode prematurely. No objectionable fumes are given off on detonation. Its use eliminates the headaches that attend the handling of ordinary explosives.
Atlas Non-Freezing is made in five grades, thus covering all blasting requirements.
Tell us what explosives you are using now and we will tell you what grade of Atlas Non-Freezing will do the work and save you the inconvenience which attends the use of explosives that are not immune from the effects of cold.
Branch offices: - Allentown, Pa.; Birmingham, Ala.; Boston; Chicago; Des Moines, Ia.; Houghton, Mich.; Joplin, Mo.; Kansas City; Knoxville; McAlester, Okla.; Memphis; New Orleans; New York; Philadelphia; Pittsburg; Kansas; Pittsburgh, Pa.; Pottsville, Pa.; St. Louis; Wilkes-Barre.
No thawing – No headaches – No objectionable fumes
Occurrence:
“Some thirty-five or forty years ago, when the Brandywine Quarry at Wilmington, Delaware, was in operation, Mr. Fred Hilbiber, then living in that city, discovered in this quarry the minerals here described. The quarry is located a quarter mile northwest of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad bridge on Brandywine Creek. It is at present used as a storage yard adjacent to a leather manufacturing plant.
“The country rock is a gabbro, containing numerous quartz stringers and masses due to the effects of intrusive granite, and showing the minerals enumerated below....” (The minerals associated with the canbyite are listed in the article.)
Explosives Department
Wilmington, Delaware
Dupont: Explosives – Service
You can use the now low-freezing Du Pont Straight Dynamite in any weather without thawing.
“This powder gave us excellent results…as we found it was the only powder we had during the past winter, and especially during zero weather, which we did not have to thaw, it being in perfect condition at all times when we took it out of our large, unheated magazine…this is the type of powder we have long looked for.” (Excerpt from letter from a large user of explosives)
The quick action, great shattering power and reliability of Du Pont Straight Dynamite has made it for many years the standard for many kinds of work. The new low-freezing Du Pont Straight, the result of years of work by Du Pont Chemical Engineers, retains all the finer qualities of the old “Straight” without its great disadvantage – high freezing point, requiring a time-wasting and dangerous thawing operation. The new Du Pont Straight can be used successfully without thawing in any weather. It is indeed “the type of powder we have long looked for.”
Birmingham, Ala.; Boston, Mass.; Buffalo, N.Y.; Chicago, Ill.; Denver, Colo.; Duluth, Minn.; Huntington, W. Va.; Kansas City, Mo.; New York, N.Y.; Pittsburgh, Pa.; Portland, Ore.; St. Louis, Mo.; San Francisco, Calif.; Scranton, Pa.; Seattle, Wash.; Spokane, Wash.; Springfield, Ill.
Du Pont Products Exhibit: Atlantic City, N. J.
“Delaware - The Diamond State. The State’s nickname alludes to its small size and has no relation to diamonds. Delaware’s mineral industry is small and consists largely of sand, gravel, and stone production.”
“U.S. 13. - A stone quarry can be observed about 2 miles northeast of the center of Wilmington on U.S. 13 (circa 1967). Riprap, large stones used for breakwaters, and crushed stone for roads and concrete aggregate are produced. The rock quarries is a dark colored granitic material called grabbro by geologists and traprock by road builders.”
Main Office: Wilmington, Del.
Fuse, Caps, Reels, Batteries, Augers, Wires, Cap Nippers, Electric Fuses. Thawing Kettles and Stump Blasting Tools.
1321 Monadnock Block, Chicago, Ill.
Lima. O.
Cuyahoga B’ldg., Cleveland, Ohio
Clifton Forge, Va.
Wainwright Bldg., St. Louis, Mo.
23 W. Maryland St., Indianapolis , Ind.
Joplin, Mo.
Bradford, Pa.
Houghton, Mich.
Equitable Bldg., Atlanta, Ga.
Gante No. 14, City of Mexico
The following information relating to the Delaware stone is from the National Park Service web site for the Washington Monument:
Location: 30-Foot Level, East Wall, 1st Landing
Dimensions: 5 feet by 4 feet
Inscriptions: "Delaware. The First to Adopt will be the Last to Desert the Constitution. 1849."
Material: Granite taken from the Brandywine Battlefield
Sculptor: Information not available
Carver: J. N. Clayton
Date: June 21,1849, March 5, 1850
More Information:
The lettering of Delaware is 4' as is the date but the motto is 1 1/4".
It was first proposed to the Washington National Monument Society on June 21,1849. A letter dated to Wheatfield, June 21, 1849, proposed to furnished a block with the state's coat of arms and some appropriate event from the Revolution. On March 5, 1850, John Jones, on behalf of the state committee (which included Samuel Canby, William Chandler, and Thomas Smith), sent a letter stating that the block had arrived, and gave the inscription to the Society. In 1853, the Legislature agreed to reimburse $250.00 to the state committee members.
Commercial use of material within this site is strictly prohibited. It is not to be captured, reworked, and placed inside another web site. © . All rights reserved. Peggy B. and George (Pat) Perazzo.