Recognizing the Granite Industry in Barre, Vermont

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I have been honored that Vermonters have sent me here to the U.S. Senate to represent them for many years. In turn, I always welcome the opportunity to recognize the commitments, achievements, and successes of Vermonters and the industries found in the Green Mountain State. Today, I want to highlight the granite center of the world--not Italy, China, or Brazil--but Barre, a small town of just over 8,500 year-round residents nestled among the Green Mountains in central Vermont.

It was 350 million years ago when geologic processes created a unique granite formation 10 miles deep, 4 miles long, and 2 miles wide in the heart of present-day Barre. This extraordinary formation is now home to the world's largest deep-hole granite quarry that produces a form of granite called ``Barre Gray.'' Known around the world as the finest quality gray granite on the market, Barre Gray has been an economic engine and tourist attraction in central Vermont since the first quarry opened in the 19th century. Barre Gray is renowned by fine architects, builders, and sculpture artists in every corner of the world and is just another example of the exports coming from Vermont and extracted by Vermonters.

The granite industry in Barre has brought jobs and economic opportunity to thousands of Vermonters over the years, including many immigrants. Like my grandparents, many people came to Vermont from Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries in search of a better life. Through a combination of hard work, skill, luck, and the geologic processes that created Barre Gray 350 million years ago, many Scottish, Irish, and Italian immigrants were able to build better lives for themselves in Vermont working in the granite industry. Unfortunately, many of the immigrants working in the Barre granite industry also died in high numbers during the 1918 influenza pandemic. As many of the Vermonters we tragically lost to COVID-19 are now laid to rest under Barre Gray granite headstones, so too are many of those who worked the Barre granite quarry over 100 years ago.

Today, the granite quarry and surrounding manufacturing facilities employ more than 1,000 Vermonters who create the vast majority of the granite used in headstones and memorials in the United States. The Rock of Ages visitor center offers tours of the quarry and their 160,000- square-foot manufacturing facility, which in addition to the nearby Vermont Granite Museum, attract more than 100,000 visitors per year. These institutions also serve as important educational experiences for classes of local school children who frequently take field trips to see the geology taught in their textbooks take place in real life.

The granite industry and its history in Barre were profiled in a June 16, 2022, article published in the Washington Post. I ask unanimous consent that the article titled, ``In Barre, Vt., granite is a way of life--and beyond,'' be printed in the Record.

Business is booming. The pandemic's ``excess mortality'' has meant increased demand for quality granite to be quarried, then crafted into memorials. Moreover, as aging baby boomers realize they won't live forever, they often embrace their own mortality by purchasing ``pre-need memorials.''

Even if you don't like the idea of picking your own tombstone, Barre (pronounced ``Barry'') is worth a visit. You'll gain an appreciation for what you may have previously taken for granted, or simply preferred not to contemplate-- namely, gravestones. You'll learn about their fascinating history, along with the remarkable industry and craft required in creating them. Most fundamentally, you'll be exposed to the geological story behind the sturdy stone that carvers use to immortalize human transience.

Although small (population less than 10,000), Barre is easy to find, just seven miles from the state capital of Montpelier. Signage for Exit 6 on Interstate 89 lets you know this is where the ``Granite Quarries'' are. You then might drive along Quarry Street or Stone Road on your way to a place called Graniteville. Along the way, you may pass the Cornerstone Pub & Kitchen, spot fence posts made out of granite and catch sight of what otherwise would be unremarkable commercial signs, such as for lawyers' offices, engraved in granite.

Granite, granite, everywhere--highlighting the town's economic raison d'etre and the stone artistry of its residents. In front of the public library stands a stone statue of Charles Dickens's Mr. Pickwick. Another statue--of the poet Robert Bums, next to the Vermont History Center--was erected by the 19th-century Scottish masons who brought their stonecutting skills to Barre. On the other side of town is another, equally imposing statue personifying the Italian stonemasons who also brought their skills to Barre.

The European immigrants brought with them a tradition of organized labor, and Barre became the headquarters for the Quarry Workers' International Union of North America. Still standing on Granite Street is the old Socialist Labor Party Hall, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.

Rock of Ages--not the hymn but a quarry company with a visitor center of the same name--is perhaps Barre's single biggest tourist draw, typically attracting more than 100,000 visitors annually. In the fall, when the leaves turn colorful, attendance peaks. But in mid-May, on the very first day it opened for the summer season, my wife, Pat, and I were pleased to find not much of a crowd. In fact, ours was one of only three cars in the caravan that Roger, the tour guide, led from the visitor center to the huge Rock of Ages excavation site called the E.L. Smith Quarry. Still, Roger jotted on an index card the number of cars and the number of occupants in each car, so he could be sure that he could account for everyone at tour's end-- that no one had fallen and vanished into the massive hole in the ground. Covering about 50 acres and almost 600 feet deep, it lays claim to being the world's largest operating deep-hole quarry for dimension stone. (Crushed stone-- gravel--is the product of other quarries.)

Now retired after having worked most of his life in the quarry, Roger knew whereof he spoke. He explained that the granite quarried here--known as ``Barre Gray''--is known worldwide for its fine grain, even texture and superior weather resistance. Its unique proportions of quartz and feldspar (granite's main ingredients) make it especially hard while also exceptionally receptive to intricate carving and sculpting.

The granite was formed as intrusive igneous rock approximately 350 million years ago. Called a pluton by geologists, the Barre granite formation is calculated to be four miles long, two miles wide and 10 miles deep. Based on what had been extracted since the Barre quarries began operation in the 19th century, Roger estimated that ``it would take 4,500 years to extract all the granite.''

Perched on the quarry's edge was a chain-link fence to prevent visitors like us from falling in. I had seen many quarries over the years, but nothing like this. As if guarding a precious artwork, the fence barrier seemed to make the scene that much more spectacular, even otherworldly. The quarry's sheer sides, where blocks and slabs had been cut away, looked like a huge canvas of abstract art, with oxidized water stains dripping like paint. At the very bottom was a turquoise pool, this seemingly out-of-place color created by granite sediments and crystals in the water when slabs of rock are cut. Framing the scene in the far distance, the distinctive outline of Camel's Hump, Vermont's third-highest peak, punctuates the horizon.

About five miles away is the Vermont Granite Museum, housed in a renovated manufacturing shed that dates from the tum of the last century. Although massive (about 30,000 square feet), it was called a ``shed'' for its open layout and cathedral-like ceiling. Machinery to cut and move the granite blocks was powered by a dam and turbines on the nearby Stevens Branch of the Winooski River. A railroad spur, leading directly to the shed, could then transport the finished stonework. Today's visitors are transported back in time through hands-on exhibits and collections of rock specimens and old tools, even industrial rollers made of granite.

Nearby Hope Cemetery showcases local granite and the artistry it spawned. Established in 1895, the 65-acre, parklike setting is a splendid example of the 19th-century garden cemetery movement, which favored burials in rural, nonsectarian settings. The coincident, ever-more-popular use of granite for tombstones and memorials created an outdoor museum of sculpture. The once-prevalent sandstone slates and marble headstones proved much less enduring than granite.

I've been called a tombstone tourist for past pilgrimages to the dead-celebrity-populated burial ground Pere Lachaise in Paris and Cimitero Acattolico, the Roman cemetery where the poet John Keats's gravestone famously reads, ``Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water.'' But you don't have to be a melancholic taphophile to appreciate the artistry on display in Hope Cemetery, such as a Pieta-like statue and realistic representations of violins and airplanes. It's the ``Uffizi of Necropolises,'' in the words of Vermont folklorist Joseph A. Citro. All of the monuments are made of Barre Gray, and virtually all have been sculpted by Barre stonemasons--some for their own graves before they died.

For Pat and me, who had lost one old friend to covid-19, a lone granite memorial in Hope Cemetery seemed especially poignant. Erected on the centenary of the 1918 pandemic, it commemorated the many Barre residents who had died of the flu. They had suffered disproportionately because of their existing silicosis (called stonecutters' disease) from inhaling granite dust while working in unventilated sheds.

Our visit to Barre was not all about death and granite, however. The trip easily included the Vermont fare of covered bridges, village greens, white church spires and maple syrup. Indeed, Pat insisted that we experience that quintessential summertime taste of the Green Mountain State: a frosty creemee. ``What's that?'' I asked. The delicious answer came at the Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks: towering swirls of soft ice cream, especially creamy, served in a cup or cone, accented with a generous portion of maple syrup or straight maple sugar.

As granite is hard and enduring, a creemee is soft and ephemeral--a most harmonious balance.

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