A Remote and Majestic Location Provides the Dramatic Setting For America’s Finest White Marble

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All Aboard for

An Aerial Tour of the Yule Marble Quarry

Had nature contrived to place Colorado Yule Marble further from the grasp of mankind she could hardly have picked a more rugged and remote spot in which to deposit her treasure.

Forged via dramatic events that transpired tens of millions of years ago, Colorado Yule Marble’s 99 % pure calcite is the product of Contact Metamorphism; whereby a small ridge of Leadville Limestone was engulfed by a mantel of magma during the third upthrust of the Rocky Mountains.

This ridge the first prospectors named ‘Treasure Mountain’, surely in reference to the quality these seasoned campaigners clearly recognized in the pure white blocks marble they retrieved by whichever means they could. Actually getting them to the market place however would lead to their ultimate demise, it should be noted, not, quite definitely not the quality of the marble – as the current quarry owners are I am sure well aware. And so in effect, the early prospector’s excitement proved well founded, for Treasure Mountain it was, and a treasure it remains today.

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Discovered in the spring of 1873 by geologist Sylvester Richardson, the marble was rediscovered under obscure circumstances by prospector George Yule.

Although the town of Marble is located just 22 miles from Aspen and the THE KMJ COONEY Marble Studio Gallery, the journey by road nevertheless covers a distance of over fifty miles.

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Take a look at the ridge developing in the above picture. This is the point where the enveloped marble bed is exposed, via erosion, at the point whereby the Yule Creek valley has cut into the existing bedrock and in doing so exposed the band of marble that Colorado Stone Quarries is quarrying today, and where marble was quarried over a hundred years ago by previous generations.

As we pan around the quarry the ridge will appear as a distinct and pronounced line and should be visible to the naked eye quite clearly.

For a hundred years the Yule marble quarry consisted of three portals, but in recent years, thanks to some shrewd investment by Red Graniti, the newly galvanized Colorado Stone Quarries have opened three new portals in just the last few years.  Never, in fact, has the future looked so bright for this miraculous marble quarry.

Modern day marble quarrying practices, such as those employed by Colorado Stone Quarries, not only ensure an incredible reduction in waste, when compared to past endeavors, but the company is currently re-purposing much of the old quarry waste incurred when it was meeting the specific demands for the many, many massive pieces of stone required to supply the entire exterior of the Lincoln Memorial.

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Now, surely, everyone can see the ridge; this Treasure Mountain, this one-and-a-half mile by three mile chunk of, dare I say it?.. perhaps the finest white marble in the world.

So very rare is this form of marble, and such is its impeccable quality – forged by contact metamorphism, i.e., contact with the earth’s magma, as opposed to the friction created by grinding tectonic plates – that up to 80 percent of quarried stone is good and solid, marketable, and very much in demand.

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The Yule Marble Quarry From Above:

A Remote and Majestic Setting For America’s Finest White Marble

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The Story of Colorado Yule Marble at martincooney.com

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