Stearns County Quarries
Rockville Granite Plant with hoist in foreground, 1900
Photo courtesy of Stearns County Historical Society
The granite for the outside base and steps of the Minnesota Capitol came from Stearns County, Minnesota. This granite came from a quarry operated by William Baxter in St. Joseph Township, west of St. Cloud. Two columns inside the rotunda were cut from Rockville granite and sculpted by a lathe operated by the Rockville Granite Company. (Two other columns of stone from Ortonville, in southwestern Minnesota, were also cut by this lathe.) The company, founded by Henry Alexander, an immigrant from Scotland, is now the Cold Spring Granite Company.
For additional information:
On the Alexander family and Rockville Granite (now Cold Spring Granite) Company:
A Century of Enduring Beauty: Cold Spring Granite Company.
Cold Spring, MN: Cold Spring Granite Co., 2002. (available at the Stearns History Museum)
Stearns History Museum Research Center in St. Cloud, MN
Quarry Park, site of several granite pits, a restored hoist and other quarrying equipment, tools and cut stone.
This huge lathe, said to be the largest west of the Mississippi River, was used to shape stone into columns, including the interior rotunda columns in the Minnesota State Capitol. The stone for these monoliths came locally from Rockville, MN and form Ortonville in southwestern Minnesota.
Photo courtesy of Stearns County Historical Society
Blacksmith Shop, Clark & McCormock Granite Co, Rockville, 1912.
Blacksmiths were essential to quarrying and stonecutting operations, not only to make tools, but keep them sharpened. There was a strike by stonecutters on the Minnesota Capitol construction site over the issue of the onsite blacksmith taking on additional work and not getting to the stonecutters' tools quickly enough.
Photo courtesy of Stearns County Historical Society, Photographer: E.S. Hill
Alexander Granite Company office, (later Rockville Granite Co.), Rockville, MN, 1900
Photo courtesy of Stearns County Historical Society
Henry Alexander home with granite porch built in 1900, Rockville, MN
Photo courtesy of Stearns County Historical Society
A quarry in Stearns County, likely one operated by Rockville Granite in the early 1900s (though not definitively identified).
Photo courtesy of Stearns County Historical Society