Monroe County
One company, two mills, and one of them is listed under the wrong state
The North American Millers’ Association’s mill map lists a flour mill 1.53 miles from the Census centre of this borough.
The same company appears a second time on that map, listed under a hamlet in NEW JERSEY — but that mill stands in Northampton County, PENNSYLVANIA, plainly on this side of the river.
So the company has one correctly listed Pennsylvania mill, here, and one Pennsylvania site recorded as another state’s. Anyone counting this state’s mills from that map will count one too few.
Quarries on the plateau, and one that works traprock
Beyond the depot the ground is stone, and it is mostly sandstone rather than the limestone of the valleys. The Locust Ridge Quarry works 9.8 miles off at Pocono Pines with 15 people, the South Sterling Quarry 11.8 miles away in Pike County with 13, and the Pocono Sand Plant 12.4 miles out at Saylorsburg with 8.
One is different: the Sterling Quarry, 9.1 miles away in Wayne County, works traprock and carries a single person on the record. Traprock is harder and more abrasive than anything else nearby and it is a punishing load on a body.
A limestone quarry sits 13.0 miles off at Saylorsburg with 10 people and the Daleville Quarry 17.1 miles away.
Dumps off the quarries, bulk tankers and box trucks off the mill, flatbeds and day cabs, rollbacks, service bodies and pickups.
This is plateau country and the grades are real, so brakes, cooling and driveline take more punishment than the mileage suggests. Between the Locust Ridge Quarry 9.8 miles off and the Pocono Sand Plant 12.4 miles away, every loaded run involves a descent.
- Common in this county. Standing does its own damage and we allow for it.
Work on this plateau is seasonal in a way the valleys are not, and a truck that stands through the winter every year reaches the end of its usefulness on the calendar rather than on the clock.
Beyond that it is the usual, from the Tobyhanna Army Depot 6.3 miles off to the South Sterling Quarry 11.8 miles away — retirements, estates and contracts that ended.