047 Flying Over Elmhurst Chicago Stone Quarry

Thanks for coming along on this drone flight over the Elmhurst Chicago Stone quarry.

Salt Creek is a 43 mile long stream that flows through the western suburbs of Chicago. Along its route is the suburb of Elmhurst with its tree-lined streets, Elmhurst University, Edward Elmhurst Hospital and vibrant downtown.

Elmhurst owes a great part of its existence to the railroads. Metra and Amtrak serve this commuter suburb. Union Pacific has 2315 miles of track in Illinois and several of them bisect the village.

Originally named Cottage Hill, the town adopted the name of Elmhurst in 1869 and was incorporated as a village in 1882. The very next year, Elmhurst-Chicago Stone Company began quarrying on an eleven acre site. The company’s first customers were builders who wanted the Dolomite limestone for foundations and walls. The process of hand-cutting stone created vast quantities of stone chips.

When I said that Elmhurst owes part of its existence to the railroads, the inverse is true as well. One use for these stone chips was soon found in the building of Chicago and Northwestern railroad roadbeds as well as countless roads and highways. Demand was so great that stone crushers and screens were installed so that more stone chips could be supplied throughout the area. Blasting limestone created even smaller chips and soon the quarry began making concrete. Stone from the quarry was taken out entirely by hand until 1914 when the first conveyors and mechanical handling equipment was installed. By 1929, the quarry had grown to 15 acres and a depth of 70 feet. In the late 1940s, the company started making ready mix concrete as it expanded operations to nearby Bolingbrook, Barlett and Kaneville. These plants still produce ready mix and offer clean construction and demolition debris dump.

The original Elmhurst quarry was sold to Du Page County in 1992 and turned into a stormwater management facility that can hold up to 2.7 billion gallons of floodwater in its two sides that are separated by West Avenue. There is a "keyway" in the wall which allows diverted flood water to fill both reservoirs. The East Lobe is the deeper of the two with an average depth of 200 feet. What looks like a stone trail is what’s called a riprapped open channel. Loose stone is deposited to prevent erosion and give water a direction to follow. When Salt Creek water elevations near flood stage, excess flood water begins spilling into a diversion channel which conveys the water to a drop shaft. Water then falls down the drop shaft into a 400 ft. long tunnel which carries the water under Rte 83 from west to east and into the west lobe of the quarry. The water is then held in the quarry until creek water levels have receded to safe levels. The water is then pumped back to Salt Creek at safe flow rates.

Under the surrounding neighborhood, well below 200 and down to over 500 feet, are remnants of the room and pillar mining operation. Workers dug out rooms but left equal sized pillars to support the 200 feet of shale above. Since the mine closed, some of those rooms were filled in with cement and debris and is now completely underwater. No longer heard is the six day a week, twice daily explosive blast schedule that greatly annoyed residents. The same residents who were once annoyed by the quarry, now have dry basements and underpasses when heavy rains hit.
If you want to see more, a lot of great historical photos are available at www.ecstone.com.

I hope you enjoyed this little aerial tour of the former Elmhurst Chicago Stone quarry. If you did, please give the video a like and consider subscribing to my channel. Thanks for coming along! In 4K. Christian

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Music:
Low Tree - "Come Back Home"
Feet On Water - "Unexpected Moment"