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The Beacon of The STone InduSTry www.slipperyrockgazette.net
novemBer volume
2019 25.11
The Rocky Road to Lyons Sandstone
Lyons Sandstone is celebrating 20 years in the quarry busi- ness, headed by co-owners Bernard and Brenda Buster.
and stabilized using local chunks and pieces. During this recovery process, we shipped thousands of tons of rubble to rebuild roads so people could get to and from their homes.
“As for our cut pieces and blocks, we rarely sort for color. Occasionally, we will do an up- charge and cull out the real out- liers. However, our Lyons Red is not like the Arizona quarries, where they have their peach, their rose, and their cream. There is hardly any color variation.
“Our quarries are really just big holes in the ground, and the for- mations are sedimentary stone,” continued Bernard. “Most people think of sedimentary stone as wa- ter-born, but this stone is actually from the sand dunes along the shores of the Great Inland Seas dating back to 270 million years ago.
“So instead of laying in flat lay- ers that would be characteristic of water-born sediments, the stone lays in a jumble, partly because of when the Rocky Mountains pushed up through those sand dunes, they scrambled things.
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Originally used as a live- stock pasture in the 1800s, the Lyons Sandstone
quarry, located in Lyons, Colorado, found its true merit as a supplier to a growing west and mid-west America in the 1800s and 1900s. From The California Gold Rush, to Chicago’s dom- inance as a mid-western meat packing and manufacturing hub, immigrants from all parts of the world came in droves to these areas to begin their American dream; and as the railroads tied the cities together, more and more building materials were needed. Wood was being supplied by vast numbers of logging operations throughout Oregon, Washington, Colorado and northern California, while quarries, both local and distant, supplied the stone to build the homes, the skyscrapers and the factories.
The Early Years
If you ask Lyons Sandstone co-owners Bernard and Brenda Buster about the history of their quarry, they’ll tell you it’s been a rocky road with lots the ups and downs and bumps in-between, recalled Bernard Buster. “The property that we are quarrying on was actually a cattle ranch that
Stone has been quarried on the is 17,000 tons, with some 13,000
Peter J. Marcucci
Photos Courtesy Lyons Sandstone
my dad, Louden Buster, bought in 1958 to continue using as a cat- tle ranch. The quarries that were on the property since the 1800s had been operated pretty much by contractors coming and going, over the years. Fortunately, we did collect some modest royalty checks over the decades. As for the cattle ranching, there were just too many years of drought, and the property was too small to support the size of heard that was needed to make a living at it. Dad did try quarrying for one year in 1969. He had a flatbed farm truck, and a friend also had a flat- bed truck with a boom that would load pallets onto dad’s truck. That was the sole amount of motorized equipment they had. Everything else was done with bars, wedges and sledge hammers.”
In the old days, according to Bernard, the quarried blocks were carved and used primarily for ar- chitecture, both locally as well as nationally. Fortunately, the sandstone formations were and still are very close to the surface;
with most being hog backs (hilly ridges) that allowed the over- burden (surface material) to get pushed over the edge.
Build It and They Will Come
“We had wanted to move back to Colorado for the 22 years that Brenda and I had been married, and thought that 1998 was a rea- sonable time to do it,” continued Bernard. “You could also say it was a mid- life crisis when switching from one profession to another. So, our first year running the quarry was 1999, and we’ve been in business for twenty years now.”
Brenda Buster: “About 15 years
ago, we began drilling holes, and we would crack the rock as a back seam to break the chunks lose and distribute them among the workers that would then split them and put them on pallets. As the years went by, the amount of product that we’ve found markets for has changed dramatically. A lot of the overburden and blocky pieces that we hadn’t developed a market for really got started after the flood here in 2013, because so many river banks were rebuilt
On the Road Again
Lyons Sandstone acreage since the 1800s. Average yearly production tons in dimensional stone, and 4,000 in landscaping stone and rip rap.
Below: Their Komatsu excavator and two loaders help move stone and dig through the light overburden.
Stone Slueth Fred Hueston reports from his road trip: “Yes, there is a Slippery Rock.” Read this month’s Stone Detective on page 16.