Montgomery County
A limestone quarry with a suburb around it
The Spring House Quarry works limestone as a surface operation under Glasgow Inc and reports 15 employees. What sits beside it is not another pit: the naval air station reserve base at Willow Grove is about 4 miles east.
The pits start immediately beyond that. Eureka Stone Quarry is about 4 miles north-east with 8 people, the Warrington Quarry about 6 miles north-east with 13, and the East Norriton Quarry about 7 miles south-west with 3.
Two companies hold most of the pits here
Those operations are less independent than their names suggest. Glasgow Inc works this pit and the McCoy Quarry about 10 miles south-west with 18 people. Eureka Stone Quarry Inc works three inside 12 miles — the one north-east of here, the Warrington Quarry and the Rush Valley Quarry about 12 miles east.
So five of the pits within 12 miles answer to two companies, and a contract lost at one is not a contract available at the next. The Plymouth Meeting Quarry about 8 miles south works limestone with 30 under Heidelberg Materials Northeast, and it is a third name again.
Twelve quarries, and suburban roads under all of them
That concentration is the fact to plan around. The Mine Safety and Health Administration records twelve quarries within 12 miles of this township, working limestone, traprock and crushed stone, on a road network that also carries everything a Philadelphia suburb carries.
So the lanes are short and busy rather than long and empty. The Abrams yards at King of Prussia are about 11 miles south-west and the Penns Park Quarry about 12 miles east with 24 people, which is roughly the width of the whole working area.
Between the Spring House Quarry here and the Blooming Glen Quarry about 11 miles north the work turns over on its own cycle, and a truck that comes off one contract does not automatically pick up the next.
- A dump body that only ever carried limestone is bought the same as one that moved everything.
A hauling contract at one of the pits ends, and because two companies hold so many of them there is often nowhere obvious to take the truck next.
So it stands between the McCoy Quarry about 10 miles south-west and the Penns Park Quarry about 12 miles east, on ground that has no further use for it.