The Industrial Revolution set in play a series of changes that would alter the life of most Americans and America's role in the world. When the assembly line processes of manufacturing made automobiles affordable, the demand for steel went up. As cityscapes outgrew wooden structures, demand for steel went up. When armor-plated warships and vehicles turned the tide of two world wars, the demand for steel went up. And as cars became affordable, dirt and wood roads suitable for horse-drawn buggies were replaced with concrete.

Near the center of this change, resting on the shore of Lake Huron, is Oglebay Norton's Calcite Quarry in Rogers City, Mich. New York businessmen opened the site in 1911 as Michigan Limestone. Later, it was purchased in the 1950s by the behemoth U.S. Steel to provide limestone for its operations via ports all along the Great Lakes.

With the booming steel market, along with the newly created need for construction aggregate, the Calcite quarry became the largest limestone producer in the country, historian Mark Thompson says. At the height of production in 1954, Calcite Quarry produced more than 15 million tons per year. Most of it was open-hearth stone for steel furnaces and required little recrushing. The quarry was purchased by Oglebay Norton in 2000, along with an interesting collection of photos.

In a small room at the operation's chemical lab, Thompson sifts through those photos documenting the Calcite Quarry's mark on history. Thompson spends many afternoons looking over nearly 35,000 images that chronicle all major purchases and construction projects, as well as community relations efforts. The first images were taken in 1911, during the second Industrial Revolution, when the site was first in development. Oglebay Norton is now donating those photos to the Presque Isle County Historical Museum.

The museum will be located in a lodge once used by managers, presidents and important customers of Michigan Limestone. It is a huge home located in the center of Rogers City. It has seven bedrooms, four bathrooms and three sun rooms.

The photos will be an integral part of revolving exhibits with various themes. And eventually they all will be digitized to help create a searchable database. It will allow visitors to search for pictures of their ancestors that may have worked at the operation.

The photos also give a glimpse at construction and extraction methods and technology long forgotten. Thompson says there are photos of the operation being built with horses and wagons. To pour the foundations, horses had to lug around a steam-powered cement mixer. And before the 1920s, structures were erected using gin poles rather than a crane.

Other images illustrate how rock was hauled to the primary crusher from the TNT-blasted muck piles. Rather than using haul trucks and wheel loaders, the operation relied on steam-powered shovels that loaded a steam locomotive's train of dump cars. They worked on a loop of track, and a man in a tower communicated when it was or was not safe to proceed. And this is how the operation worked until the 1970s, when they were replaced with diesel-powered, rubber-tired machines, Thompson says.

The first primary crusher, a 42-inch gyratory, was installed in 1911. But that was replaced in 1927 with a 60-inch gyratory crusher. Thompson says there are pictures of it coming in on railroad flat cars, with a sign advertising it as the “world's largest crusher.”

“I probably inventoried about 10,000 images, and as you go through the images, you see Calcite being built, and you see the community of Rogers City developing.” Thompson says. “So it's a tremendous historical record.”

From the time the ground was first broken in 1911, Calcite Quarry was the heart of Rogers City. “If your father didn't work there, chances are an uncle of yours did,” Thompson says. The quarry virtually built the town.

Michigan Limestone also played a direct roll in Rogers City's development. The company built more than 100 homes, many for its a critical employees. And in 1960, when the company pulled out of the real estate market, the homes were offered to the owners at attractive prices, Thompson says. Day to day, a company-owned bus would drive house to house, picking up employees for each shift. And during the winter, the company cut blocks of ice from Lake Huron for employees to use in their ice boxes.

“It was a very paternalistic operation, right from the beginning and well into the 1950s,” Thompson says. “This little community really centered around that quarry operation.”

The company was a leader in the construction of schools, churches and hospitals. Employees were treated well. There were never any signs of civil unrest, and labor unions had difficulty organizing, Thompson says. In years past, Calcite had as many as 550 employees.

Today there are only 124 hourly employees and 15 salary employees at Calcite Quarry because of more efficient technology. But the operation remains one of the most significant employers in the community, drawing people in from all surrounding communities.

From Calcite, Oglebay Norton yields an average of 60,000 tons of usable material per blast. At year's end the quarry produces between 8 million and 9 million tons, says Plant Manager John Nordin. The plant remains one of the largest suppliers for the steel industry along the Great Lakes. The limestone, which is roughly 97.5% calcium carbonate, also is used to create lime. Its chemical-grade limestone is the main ingredient in cement manufacturing. The material also is used as a clarifying agent for refining sugar from sugar beets and for emissions control in coal-fired power plants. The construction industry is a primary consumer of material. Nordin says about 3,000 acres are actively mined from the 7,000-acre site. Depending on demand, it should last another 100 years.

Despite the more efficient technology, the manufacturing process remains the same as it was during the steel boom. The rock is blasted and transported to the same 60-inch gyratory crusher that was installed in 1927. And material is fed via conveyor to a surge pile or straight to the mill. But one major difference is market requirements. Nordin says, further recrushing is required to meet changing market applications.

Oglebay Norton begins by stripping away about 30 feet of overburden. The first 20 feet usually consists of sandy soil, but the remaining 10 feet is a layer of dolomitic rock that requires blasting prior to removal. This is normally done during the off season when production equipment is available.

They blast in 17- × 26-foot patterns with 6¾-inch holes. Oglebay Norton does its own drilling with a DM45E Ingersoll Rand drill. A contractor is brought in to load the holes with explosives, usually ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. Oglebay Norton then takes over and strings the holes together and blasts. Benches are typically 40 feet high. Nordin says the quarry floor will remain about 100 feet below lake level at its deepest point because the mine follows the limestone layers.

To move the shot rock, Oglebay Norton no longer relies on steam engines and steam shovels. Instead they load haul trucks with a Hitachi EX3500 hydraulic shovel with a 23-yard bucket and Cat 994 wheel loaders. Running the 2.5-mile stretch to the primary crusher are three 150-ton Cat haul trucks and three 200-ton Cat 789 haul trucks.

The Traylor Bulldog 60- × 89-inch gyratory crusher has a typical throughput of 3,200 tons per hour. It crushes boulders as large as four feet down to minus 10 inches. It is powered by a 500-horsepower motor that is driven by 12 V-belts.

A computer controls the feed rate and material level in the crusher. Sonar devices measure the feed levels of the pan feeder and the crusher chamber. As the pan feeder empties, a system of lights signals the haul truck operators to proceed. A PLC system introduced around 1985 regulates the feed. Before then an operator sat in a control room to maintain the appropriate levels. Below the crusher are chutes and conveyors with scales that can take product to a surge pile or straight into the mill.

The mill consists of 73 screens in an eight-story building and processes 4,500 to 5,000 tons per hour. The product is rescreened and washed prior to boat loading. They rely on two dredge pumps: one powered by a 1,200-horsepower motor and the other by 1,750-horsepower motor. Together they can pump about 25,000 gallons per minute.

Secondary crushing begins at the top of the mill where the stone is distributed over a pair of grizzly roll screens. Overs from the roll screens are fed to three 1923 Traylor roll crushers, which are still driven by leather belts. The finer stone drops through to the first seven floors of vibrating screens. The coarser rock is directed to the tertiary crushers: two seven-foot Symons and a Metso Minerals HP800. Those reduce the rock to about minus 1 inch and recirculates it through the screens.

The finished product is carried by conveyors to two separate stockpile areas: the south side and the north side. The south side has the larger stone used for metallurgical purposes. The north side is made up of the finer products, primarily construction aggregate.

The loading slip is 150 × 1,000 feet and is 26 feet deep. The South dock loads up to 6,000 tons per hour, and the north dock can load 3,200 tons per hour. However, loading rates for both sides are typically 3,000 tons per hour, Nordin says.

There is loading equipment on each side, so two vessels can be loaded simultaneously. The vessels move slowly past extended telescoping conveyors that fill the storage compartments with material.

Dock Manager Warren Pauly, says during a busy month, Calcite may load more than 1 million tons and has shipped out as much as 100,000 tons in a single day. But there are slow periods in the summer when two or three days go by without a single vessel. They arrive within about 15 minutes of the scheduled arrival times in average weather conditions. The company usually knows the schedule three days in advance so that it can prepare the order. Vessels travel as far as 540 miles to Duluth, Minn., and make frequent stops in Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland.

Pauly says the average vessel hauls about 20,000 to 25,000 tons. They average 70 feet wide × 770 feet long and take about 10 to 12 hours to load.

About 98% of the product is shipped via boats. Some of it is shipped directly to independent docks that resell the product. Other customers, such as the steel mills, have it shipped direct. The vessels and barges transporting stone are equipped with self-unloading conveyors.

The vessels have undergone some significant changes since the operation's beginning, Nordin says. Changes such as converting from coal to diesel, adding bow thrusters for more maneuverability, and adding self-unloading capabilities. And some boats are now being converted into barges that are pushed by tugs. But despite the era, they were always critical part of transporting limestone on the Great Lakes.

The limestone hauled by these vessels was the lifeblood of the steel industry, Thompson says. Virtually all of the steel used by the auto industry in the Great Lakes region, was produced from blast-furnace rock from Calcite. And don't forget about the material used to build the roadways in those areas. Even the railroads crisscrossing the country were heavily dependant on the same steel, Thompson says.

“The plant really touched the life of virtually every person in the country,” Thompson says. And when the exhibits hit the Presque Isle Historical Museum, the quarry will touch many more.

Equipment Reference

Mobile Equipment

• (3) Caterpillar 785 150-ton haul truck
• (3) Caterpillar 789 200-ton haul truck
• (2) Caterpillar 994 FEL wheel loader
• (1) Hitachi EX3500 hydraulic shovel
• (4) Caterpillar D10 dozers
• (1) DM45E Ingersoll Rand drill

Processing Equipment

Primary Crushing

• (1) Traylor Bulldog 60-inch × 89-inch gyratory

Secondary Crushing

• (2) Traylor Slugger 54-inch-wide, 36-inch-diameter roll crushers
• (1) Traylor Slugger 84-inch-wide, 36-inch-diameter roll crusher

Tertiary Crushing

• (2) 7-foot Symons shortheads, fine bowls, medium liners
• (1) Metso Minerals HP800 STD head, fine chamber.