There were not a lot of commercial stone quarries operating in California in the latter half of the 1800’s, so cemetery stones or blocks of stone were imported from Vermont, Georgia, Tennessee, and Italy for use as buildings and cemetery markers in California prior to California marble and granite quarries becoming widely available.
Granite was imported from Vermont and Scotland, but it was not easily cut or carved until the invention of the steam-driven equipment, such as the pneumatic drills and steam-powered saws. With the creation of these powered pieces of equipment, many men in the stone industry lost their jobs.
The following postcard photographs are of quarries located in states in the east coast which sent stone to California.
This engraving is a marble quarry at Carrara, Italy, from a late 1800’s magazine article.
This is an engraving of the Rubislaw Granite Quarry, Aberdeenshire, from a sketch by S. Read, in The Illustrated London News, April 20, 1862, pp. 410.
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