Kankakee's history is full of holes … holes in the earth, that is: for more than 160 years, digging up the limestone lying beneath Kankakee has been an important economic activity. While there were once nearly a dozen quarries in the city, none are actively operating today, and most have disappeared from sight.
The first quarry in what is now Kankakee County was opened in late 1852 or early 1853 along the Kankakee River near the mouth of Wiley Creek, several miles downstream from where the city would be located. The Illinois Central Railroad, being built southward from Chicago, needed blocks of stone for its Kankakee River bridge piers and abutments.
Actually, the railroad could have found a good source of stone much closer to its bridge site. Within a few years of the Illinois Central's arrival, several quarries were operating within a mile or so of the bridge. An 1867 Kankakee Gazette article described local quarrying operations, noting that "stone of a superior quality, infinite in quantity, and the best in the state," could be found "but a few feet below the surface of the earth, in the very vicinity of Soldier Creek bridge." The bridge it referred to carried Fifth Avenue across the creek a short distance north of Oak Street.
By the late 1800s, quarries were operating along both sides of Soldier Creek from Washington Avenue north of Chestnut Street to the point where the creek joined the Kankakee River near Court Street. Largest and oldest of the Soldier Creek operations was the Kankakee Stone and Lime Company, founded by businessman Solon Knight in 1856. It was the source of cut stone building blocks used by the Illinois Central and other railroads for culverts and bridges, as well as for local business and residential buildings.
Stone for two downtown churches built in the 1860s, First Baptist (now Wildwood Church of the Nazarene) and First Methodist (now Asbury), came from Davis Woodward's quarry just south of the mouth of Soldier Creek. Today, Alpiner Park occupies the filled-in site of that quarry. Other parks built on filled-in quarry land are Washington Park at Entrance Avenue and Chestnut Street (once part of the Kankakee Stone and Lime operation), and North Schuyler Park at Mulberry Street and Schuyler Avenue (once City Quarry).
Bird Park, north of Station Street on the west side of the Kankakee River, is a former quarry that is used for fishing and scuba diving. Opened by Worth W. Bird in 1875, the quarry was given to the City of Kankakee in 1928 for park use. It was used as a public beach for two years, but was closed when the state Board of Health declared the water unsafe for swimmers. The section of Bird Park north of Court Street, location of the Palzer Band Shell, is a filled-in quarry site.
Two other former quarries in the city have interesting histories. Probably the first quarry to operate within the present Kankakee city limits was the South Side (also known as the Sinclair) Quarry. Located north of Jeffery Street between Schuyler Avenue and the Kankakee River, the quarry was opened by the Illinois Central Railroad, probably in 1854. Employing as many as 100 men, the quarry supplied stone ballast for the railroad as tracks were laid southward from Kankakee. Once construction was completed, the quarry continued to provide stone for maintenance. In the early years, the stone was broken down to the size needed by laborers wielding sledgehammers; later, a mechanical crusher produced 40 to 60 railcar loads of stone each day. The quarry shut down in the early 1900s. Today, it is used by Aqua Illinois to dispose of material filtered out during processing at its water treatment plant.
On July 9, 1915, the McLaughlin-Mateer Quarry, located north of Sycamore Street between Schuyler Avenue and Old Fair Park, became a lake. Rain-swollen Soldier Creek, which ran along the east side of the quarry, broke through a levee and poured water into the 100-foot-deep hole. More than $10,000 in quarrying equipment (including, according to local folklore, a railroad engine) was submerged beneath the waters.
While the quarries themselves have mostly disappeared, the product they produced — carefully hand-crafted building stone — can be seen on many structures in downtown Kankakee and in the city's older neighborhoods.
In 1906, W.R. Sanborn and M.J. Edgeworth bought 20 acres of land and began operating a quarry to provide ballast rock for the Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa Railroad. Today, that quarry is still in operation, and is the largest in Kankakee County. Name the quarry and identify its location.
<strong>Answer:</strong> The Lehigh Quarry, located on the western edge of Limestone Township, seven miles west of Kankakee and about three-fourths mile south of Illinois Route 17. The quarry produces crushed stone and agricultural lime. It is currently owned by Vulcan Materials Co., the nation's largest producer of crushed stone, sand, and gravel.