ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Vulcan
quarry?
‘It rocks!’
BY WILL DAVIS
To its credit, Vulcan has continued its outreach to local schoolchildren despite being significantly
affected by the economic downturn
since 2007. Back in the mid-2000s
the quarry employed as many as
57 people and sold 3 million tons of
rock every year. Like so many businesses, especially those related
to construction, Vulcan has seen
lean times since then. The quarry
now has 30 employees, about half
its peak level, and now sells 1.1
million tons of rock per year.
“It’s been rough,” says Lawson. But he added that business
seems to be picking back up and
said it won’t hurt that Congress
recently passed a bill to keep
money flowing for state highways.
Mega road builder Seaboard
Construction, currently doing large
paving projects in Savannah and
see how companies preserve the
environment while still mining
valuable granite from the ground.
And its efforts have been recognized as the quarry was given the
National Stone, Sand and Gravels
Environmental Eagle Award for
preserving nature and teaching
child ren its value.
And Vulcan’s contributions to
Monroe County extend beyond its
educational efforts. Of the quarry’s
30 employees, about half live in
Monroe County. And Vulcan is one
of the county’s biggest property taxpayers, pitching in about
$52,000 every year for schools
and county government.
Monroe County commission
chairman Mike Bilderback said the
plant also gives the county road
department easy access to gravel
for roads at minimal costs.
M
onroe County gravel
may not be paving the
world, but it’s paving
a good portion of it thanks to the
Vulcan Materials’ rock quarry off
Hwy. 87 near Juliette.
The Dixie Lime and Stone Co.
first dug the quarry in the 1960s,
finding a cache of granite common
to Georgia’s Fall Line. The quarry
has since changed hands several
times. Florida Rock Co. owned it
until 2007 when Vulcan bought the
800-acre facility.
While the Monroe County
quarry is one of 28 Vulcan quarries in Georgia, there are some
things that make it unique. For
one, it’s served by rail, as most
of the rock mined at Vulcan
goes by train car to Savannah or
Brunswick. No. 2, it has a unique
conveyor belt that carries mined
granite underneath busy Hwy.
87 to the processing plant on the
north side of the highway to be
crushed for sale.
But perhaps the quarry is bestknown for hosting about 2,000
local third-graders every year to
76
The Vulcan Rock Quarry on Hwy. 87 hosts Middle Georgia students for field trips every year.
teach them about rocks, quarries
and nature.
Plant manager Gary Bryant
and assistant plant manager
Barry Lawson joke that they can’t
go anywhere in Middle Georgia
without a kid saying,”hey, you’re
the rock quarry guys!”
Brunswick, remains the quarry’s
biggest customer.
While the quarry has waited
for demand to rebound, it hasn’t
flagged in its mission to teach
children about the rock business.
Vulcan has built a nature trail at
the quarry to help schoolchildren
“It’s a convenience we have
that other counties don’t have,”
said Bilderback. “We have a good
relationship with them and with the
good price on gravel, we can pass
that savings onto taxpayers.”
Georgia’s generous deposits of
granite are part of the reason the
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