Utah's Limestone Industry, and Utah's Railroads
Compiled by Don Strack
This page was last updated on August 17, 2008.
(This is a work in progress; research continues.)
Limestone Glossary:
- Dolomite — A carbonate of calcium and magnesium. Also called Magnesian limestone. Normally colorless, but often tinted pink or brown. Uses: generally the same as limestone. There is no substitute for dolomite, however, in the making of dead-burned dolomite refractories and in preparation of basic magnesium carbonate used in heat-insulating material. Also used in manufacture of epsom salts, known as "Epsomite."
- Limestone — Sedimentary rock occurring in practically inexhaustible
quantity in nearly all parts of the world, composed essentially of calcium
carbonate. Uses: as a flux in smelting iron, steel, ferro alloys and
some nonferrous metals; in making lime and agricultural limestone; as crushed
stone for road and railroad construction, rip rap and rubble; as building
stone; in pulverized form as substitute for chalk whiting in putty, paint,
rubber, etc.; as terrazzo, stucco dash, concrete block facings; for sugar
refining, insecticides, rock dust for use in coal mines, etc.
Limestone itself is available in several different forms:
- as natural lime rock, the raw material for all lime-based products, composed almost exclusively of calcium carbonate.
- as quicklime (or calcium oxide, or burnt lime), obtained by calcining pure limestone at temperatures above 900°C. This highly reactive product is essential to many industrial processes.
- as hydrated lime (or calcium hydroxide, or slaked lime), a dry powder, resulting from the controlled slaking of quicklime with water. This reaction produces heat.
- as lime milk, a suspension of hydrated lime in water. This clean and safe product offers an economic solution because of its low cost and high alkaline content.
- as dolomite (or dolomitic limestone), limestone that contains a certain proportion of magnesium.
- as dolime (or dolomitic lime, or burnt dolomite), obtained by calcining dolomitic limestone, with two differing products: soft-burned dolomite and hard-burned dolomite, which differ in terms of their calcining techniques.
Utah County Limestone/Dolomite Plants and Quarries
The crushed limestone industry is Utah County's greatest nonmetallic mineral producer. There are good commercial-grade deposits of limestone in various districts, particularly near Payson, at Pelican Point [west shore of Utah Lake] and in the Tintic district, where Chief Consolidated Mining Co. owns properties. Largest operation is the U. S. Steel Corp.'s Keigley Quarry near Payson [Santaquin], which supplies crushed limestone for the Geneva Works, to be used as a fluxing material in the making of steel. This project averages about 300,000 tons per year. The Lakeside Lime & Stone Co. has quarries and a crushing plant at Pelican Point which not only make slack and lump lime, but furnish some fluxing material to Geneva and supply the coal industry with quantities of rock dust. The crushed rock is also used for whiting, roadstone and lime production. (Utah Mining Association, "Operational and Economic Review, August 1967, page 90)
Pelican Point
In June 2001, Larson Limestone Co., the operator of the Pelecan Point limestone quarry, was sold to The Murdock Group for $7 million. The following comes from The Enterprise, Volume 30, Number 49, June 18, 2001:
Pelican Point owns and operates a 90-acre limestone quarry in Lehi with an estimated 20-plus years of limestone reserves. Pelican Point extracts the limestone, crushes it into a variety of sizes ranging from giant decorative rock to fine powder, and then distributes it to construction and manufacturing companies in the Intermountain West.
Pelican Point had revenues of approximately million and cash flow of approxitiatei ly $600.000 in 2000, according to The Murdock Group Holding. Pelican's customers include the U.S. Forest Service, Staker Paving and Kennecott Copper, as well as local contractors. Pelican Point has been in business for 18 years.
Current management will remain in place and continue operating the quarry. The acquisition includes the quarry property, equipment and machinery, and the operating business.
Keigley Limestone Quarry (Santaquin)
The Keigly quarry was opened in about 1942 as part of the U. S. government's Geneva steel project, to furnish limestone for the new Geneva steel plant. Production of pig iron began at the new steel plant on January 3, 1944. (Murray Eagle, January 6, 1944)
During 1988, Geneva Steel's limestone quarry at Keigley, west of Santaquin in Utah County, mined 340,000 tons of limestone. Geneva used limestone as a flux in its steel making process. (Flux helps materials mix together easier.) (Deseret News, January 29, 1989)
During 1996, Geneva Steel produced about 200,000 tons of dolomite from the Keigley quarry, located near the southeast end of Utah Lake in Utah County. The majority of the dolomite was used in the blast furnace operation at the Geneva plant while the remainder was crushed to a fine powder and marketed as "rock dust" for use to suppress coal-dust in underground coal mines.
Tooele County Limestone/Dolomite Plants and Quarries
(click here for a Google map of rail spurs serving these plants)
Tooele County is second only to Salt Lake County in the manufacture of lime. The U. S. Lime Division of The Flintkote Co. has a plant near Grantsville that is a consistent and substantial producer from stone quarries nearby. This firm's operations at Dolomite and Flux, northwest of Grantsville, are the biggest in the state. They furnish the limestone for Kennecott Copper Corp.'s large time plant in Salt Lake County. U. S. Lime Division has its own crushing, screening, sizing and pulverizing facilities. It furnishes crushed limestone for use in the smelting of nonferrous metals, in sugar refining, for "sweetening up" of cement by Portland cement manufacturers, as rip rap, etc. Pulverized stone is sold for an additive in asphalt black-top road mix, as rock dust for coal mining, as a water purifier in water treatment plants, and for fluorine gas control at the Geneva Works in Utah County. The Utah Marblehead Lime Co. has a $3 million dolomite plant near Delle which furnishes "deadburned" dolomite for the open hearth furnaces at the Geneva Works. (Utah Mining Association, "Operational and Economic Review, August 1967, page 83)
According to USGS data, the limestone quarries in Tooele County are located in the East Erickson District, in the Sheeprock Mountains.
1918:
Western Pacific completed the Ellerbeck/Dolomite branches in 1918 to serve
limestone quarries at Dolomite and Flux. (LeMassena, page 269) The Ellerbeck
Branch connected with the WP main line at Ellerbeck, and terminated at Flux,
3.7 miles from Ellerbeck. A spur leaves the Ellerbeck Branch at Dolomite Junction
and terminates at Dolomite. This spur is shown as the 'K' Line, and was built
in 1917-1918.
June 1958:
An article in the WP Mileposts magazine stated that the dolomite (lime rock)
traffic from the plant at Marblehead began in June 1958, replacing lime rock
that had been shipped to U. S. Steel's Geneva plant from Illinois. The name
Marblehead comes from the name of the company in Illinois, which located
a deposit in Utah, and created a subsidiary company for its new operations.
The reason may have been either to reduce the transportation distance and/or
charges, or if there was a problem with the deposit in Illinois, such as
depletion or degradation of the deposit there. The branch is apparently unused
at this point in early 2006, since Geneva Steel has closed. The article
in WP Mileposts mentioned a rather large deposit at the Marblehead location,
and other uses, including railroad ballast. (Thom Anderson)
Along the former WP Ellerbeck Branch, there were three separate limestone quarries. From south to north their station names were Climax, Flux, and Dolomite. The quarry at Climax is now abandoned and reclaimed (mostly). The quarry at Flux is not in use, but the plant is being used to load an occasional rail car using a variety of former U. S. Steel and U. S. Army switching locomotives owned by Broken Arrow, who provides the switching service to Chemical Lime. The quarry at Dolomite is very active loading trucks and rail cars.
Climax Quarry: (history unknown, research continues)
Flux Quarry: Utah Lime was sold to U. S. Lime Company in (?); U. S. Lime was sold to to Flintkote in 1958; Flintkote was sold to Chemical Lime in (?).
Utah Lime & Stone Company was organized in April 1914 to operate quarries five miles northwest of Grantsville. The majority owners were T. R. Ellerbeck and W. L. Ellerbeck. The company was to operate lime and building stone quarries, along with clay and silica beds. They had already furnished 500,000 tons of crushed stone for use as track ballast for the Western Pacific Railroad along the south shore of Great Salt Lake. (Tooele Transcript, April 3, 1914)
Flintkote bought Utah Lime and Stone Company on June 24, 1958. (New York Times, June 25, 1958)
Dolomite Quarry: U. S. Lime to Flintkote, to Chemical Lime
At Flux and Dolomite, the plants were operated by U. S. Lime Co., a division of Flintkote Company. U. S. Lime Company, along with Utah Lime and Stone Company, were the focus of Flintkote's Utah operations. The Utah Lime and Stone Company quarry is located at the railroad station known as Flux.
In 1979, Genstar Corporation acquired all of Flintkote's outstanding stock. At the end of 1985, Flintkote operated five wallboard, nine roofing, one cement and four lime plants throughout the United States (including U. S. Lime, and Utah Lime, both in Utah), as well as 44 plants in the United States engaged in producing and distrbuting various mineral aggregate and concrete related products.
In 1986, Imasco Limited, now known as Imperial Tobacco Canada Limited, acquired Genstar. From mid 1986 through September 2003, Flintkote was an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of Imasco. Shortly after its takeover of Genstar, Imasco sold all of Flintkote's operating businesses to varous third paries. In the case of the stone, gypsum, roofing and lime businesses, Imasco transferred Flintkote non-asbestos assets and liabilities for each division to separate, newly-formed subsidiary corporations (Newco Lime Co., for Flintkote's lime business). Imasco then sold these newly-formed Flintkote subsidiaries to third-pary purchasers. Flintkote's lime business manufactured and distrbuted various lime products, including high calcium, dolomitic quicklime and hydrates. It was sold to Chemical Lime Company. (this may contradict other information that Chemical Lime bought Genstar's lime business in 1996)
In May 2004 Flintkote declared bankruptcy as a result of class action asbestos litgation by 157,000 claimants, along with 2,800 employees of Flintkote's asbestos mine in Canada.
At the location known as Dolomite, there is today [2008] a plant operated by Chemical Lime, a member of the Lhoist Group of Belgium. In 1981, the Lhoist Group, Brussels, Belgium, and Europe's leading lime producer, made an initial investment in Chemical Lime Company. In 1989, Lhoist purchased the majority interest in CLC and in 1998 acquired full ownership. The Lhoist Group expanded into the Southeast with the acquisition of Allied Lime in 1989, and into the West with the purchase of Genstar's lime division in 1996. Chemical Lime operates plants in 15 states and another plant in British Columbia.
Chemical Lime operates a quarry and processing plant near Grantsville, at the railroad station known as Dolomite. Material mined by Chemical Lime is processed through size segregation, from powder up to one-inch rock. About 75 percent of the mined product is ready to use as-is, while the remaining portion goes through further processing in a kiln, located in a plant adjacent to the quarry. As of March 2008, Chemical Lime, a privately held company that has been operating in Utah for 75 years, has 37 employees in the state and produces between 7,000 and 8,000 tons of lime a month, most of which is shipped via Union Pacific.
Cricket Mountain Quarry (Delta)
Operated by Graymont Western, the Cricket Mountain Quarry in Delta. At Cricket Mountain, the limestone is crushed and sized at the quarry before being delivered by truck to the Cricket Mountain Plant six-and-a-half miles away. The Cricket Mountain plant is one of the largest lime plants in the western United States. Stone delivered from the quarry is processed there in four coal-fired, preheater kilns, manufacturing a full range of high calcium and dolomitic quicklime, along with crushed and pulverized limestone products. Blending facilities produce the perfect combinations for the specific needs of different customers, and the Cricket Mountain operation also includes storage and shipping facilities.
The Cricket Mountain quarry was operated by Continental Lime, Inc., in 1996. Located approximately 35 miles (56 Km) southwest of Delta in Millard County, and rated as one of the 10 largest lime plants in the United States.
Graymont Western U.S., Inc., purchased the Cricket Mountain quarry during 2000. From Graymont's web site:
Graymont is the third largest producer of lime in North America. In Canada, Graymont subsidiaries have operations from New Brunswick to British Columbia. In the United States, subsidiary companies operate in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington, Oregon, Montana, Utah and Nevada while serving markets in a much wider geographic area. In addition to Graymont's lime interests, Graymont Materials, located in upstate New York and the province of Quebec, provides construction stone, sand and gravel, asphalt products and ready mix concrete for the infrastructure and general construction needs of the area.
In 2003, Graymont became a part owner of Grupo Calidra. Calidra is the largest lime producer in Mexico, with seventeen production sites in Mexico and one in Honduras. The company, like Graymont, is privately held and has more than ninety years of continuous experience in the Lime and Limestone industries. Calidra mines some of the highest quality limestone deposits in Mexico.
(click here for Graymont's web page, with photos, of their Cricket Mountain plant)
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