The Mine Safety and Health Administration lists three operations in the county and every one of them is crushed stone — no coal, no sand. That single-commodity record is unusual, and it means a truck based here is working one kind of load or leaving the county to find another.
Here the restrictions belong to the county, not the townships
Beyond the quarry, the road pattern here runs the opposite way to most of this state. Within ten miles the National Bridge Inventory records 128 structures and 8 coded below legal loads — and 5 of those 8 are county-maintained against only 2 of the townships’.
That inverts the usual picture: in this valley the county owns the restricted crossings, and Union restricts seven of the twenty-six bridges it maintains against one of its townships’.
The nearest restricted crossing is 1.46 miles away. The lowest rating among them is about eight US tons and the lowest clearing the commercial floor about eighteen, so on a loaded run the county road is the one to check.
Where the branches meet, and the stone is on both banks
That valley is the reason for the pattern. This sits in the Susquehanna between Sunbury and Lewisburg, where the North and West Branches meet and the limestone of the Great Valley’s northern extension is quarried on both sides of the water.
The Paxtonville Quarry works 7.4 miles off with 22 people, the Winfield Quarry 9.9 miles away with 9 and the Lewisburg Quarry 10.8 miles out with 16. Further on, sand loads 13.1 miles away, a yard sits 13.5 miles off and the Mandata Quarry works 17.9 miles out with 26.
Road networks in this valley are large — a couple of hundred structures within ten miles at every one of these sites — so there are usually several ways round a posted crossing, which is not true everywhere in this state.
With one commodity in the county, a truck here has usually mixed quarry work with farm work to keep busy. Between the Paxtonville Quarry 7.4 miles off and the Lewisburg Quarry 10.8 miles away the lanes are moderate, and neither history counts against a truck.
A county working one commodity has a thin second-hand market, so a truck that stops suiting the quarry does not always find a farm that wants it.
Beyond that it is holdings changing hands, retirements and estates, from the Paxtonville Quarry 7.4 miles off to the Mandata Quarry 17.9 miles away.