Ste. Genevieve County
Five crushed-stone operations are attached to Ste. Genevieve, and they span nearly the whole range this trade produces. Tower Rock records 170 employees to the federal mine regulator. Brickeys records 28, Roth 16, Hardstone Pit #1 eight, and Bauman Sand & Gravel three.
That first figure is the one to sit with. On the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s count that is 170 employees, against 186 at the Annapolis quarry over in Iron County.
An operation of that size runs continuously, ships by barge as well as by road, and keeps a fleet big enough to have a written specification, a maintenance department and a replacement cycle. So its machines leave with records — which is the exact opposite of the one- and two-person registrations that make up most of this data, and it is worth knowing which end of that range a truck came from.
The river changes what the local roads can tell you
That barge leg is not a detail. Ste. Genevieve and Cape Girardeau counties face the Mississippi across the Illinois line, and the limestone along it has been quarried and shipped by water since the eighteenth century — Ste. Genevieve is the oldest permanent European settlement in Missouri.
A quarry with river access has a mode a landlocked one does not. The longest hauls leave by water and the truck fleet does short local delivery, which inverts the usual reading: employment and tonnage stop predicting truck mileage, and the local road network says less about the business here.
The road figures are correspondingly quiet. Within ten miles there are 62 structures, five of them posted for load and three rated below legal loads, none county-maintained, the nearest 2.39 miles out. Across the county, one structure of 35 is rated below legal loads — 2.9 per cent, against a statewide county-maintained rate of 12.7.
Out here the straightest route is often that we buy it remotely and arrange the tow, with nobody having to make the drive. We can also come to you and drive it away, or come and tow it, and if you are heading up the river road anyway you can bring it to us. Between Tower Rock at one end and Bauman Sand at the other, this county turns over the whole range of it.
- On this stretch of the river the operations run from three people to a hundred and seventy, and a documented fleet machine is a very different proposition from a one-man registration. Both get bought; the records just make it quicker.
- Where the long hauls leave by water the road fleet does short local delivery, so the mileage can be well below what the size of the operation suggests.
Yards from the Roth Quarry round to the Tower Rock workings usually have one sitting.