Rock of Ages: An invitation to visit the world's deepest granite quarry

Speaking of cemeteries, here's a 64-year-old advertisement for the Rock of Ages Corporation in Graniteville, Vermont.¹

The ad appears on the inside front cover of the August 1-15, 1948, issue of The Key, a staplebound tourist guide to central Vermont that was distributed in hotels, tourist cabins and transportation hubs. (I'll be delving into some of the other cool stuff in this issue of The Key — and there's a lot — in a future post.)

Rock of Ages was founded in 1885. Its workers continue to mine a "deep hole" quarry of Devonian Barre Granite, which is considered to be some of the finest rock in the world. Granite is, of course, highly sought for its uses in sculpture, architecture, gravestones and the sport of curling.

Here are some of the highlights of the 1948 advertising text (so that you don't have to squint or otherwise hurt your eyes):

An Invitation to visit the WORLD'S DEEPEST GRANITE QUARRY

A NATURAL WONDER OF THE WORLD

SEE —

• a 40-ACRE PANORAMA OF SOLID GRANITE
• HUGE DERRICKS, 110 feet tall, hoisting tremendous blocks — some weighing 50 tons
• THE QUARRIERS, dwarfed by their surroundings, drilling into solid granite 350 feet below you
• THE FASCINATING HILL-CLIMBING LOCOMOTIVES operating over 10 miles of private railroad

LEARN —

• HOW THE MARVELOUS VEIN of Rock of Ages came to be here
• HOW OLD IT IS
• HOW LONG THE QUARRY WILL LAST²
• HOW THE GRANITE IS SEPARATED AND REMOVED
• HOW IT IS CUT TO SIZE and SHAPE
• HOW THE 8 COMBINATIONS OF ROCK OF AGES FINISH ARE PRODUCED

Note: — Years ago, Rock of Ages actually quarried one whole block of granite which weighed 65,000,000 lbs. It took 1728 freight cars to move the granite supplied by this one block.

If you're interested in more information, here are some pages to check out on the Rock of Ages website:

• The History of Rock of Ages
• Rock of Ages connections (including Star Trek)
• Rock of Ages Visitors Center on Facebook

Footnotes
1. Rock of Ages was also mentioned, in passing, in the August 2012 post "Try a whiskey sour at Montpelier Tavern."
2. I don't know what they told people in 1948, but I found a couple modern references to this supply of granite lasting another 4,500 years.