The beautiful, high quality marble in the Crystal River valley is the only major source of the stone in Colorado. Quarries in the area were developed most extensively by Channing Meek’s Colorado Yule Marble Company from 1907 to 1941. The quarries have supplied marble for many famous landmarks, including the Lincoln Memorial, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the Capitol Building in Denver.

Early History

The marble deposits in the Crystal River valley are about 50–60 million years old. They are made of dense black “Leadville Limestone,” which formed during the Paleozoic Era (542 million years ago – 251 million years ago). At that time, central Colorado was under a shallow sea. Roughly 200 million years later, when the Rocky Mountains uplifted, magma rose to the crust. It heated the limestone around the current town of Marble, killing all the organic matter and causing metamorphosis. The result was pure white marble. When the magma cooled, it hardened into granite around the marble.

Geologist Sylvester Richardson first noticed the region’s marble in 1873 on an expedition to the Elk Mountains. Prospectors noted the area’s marble deposits throughout the 1870s and 1880s. Since they were primarily interested in precious metals, they made no attempt to quarry the stone. In any case, the stone was too heavy to transport without well-established wagon roads.

Early Quarries and Quandaries

The neighboring towns of Marble and Clarence were established in 1881. Soon gold and silver miners in the area were reporting that the roofs of their mines were made of fine white marble. The first marble quarry in the Crystal River valley was established in 1884. Many entrepreneurs tried and failed to develop quarries around Marble. The main problems were a lack of capital and insufficient transportation.

By 1888 both the Colorado Midland and the Denver & Rio Grande Railroads had reached Carbondale, about twenty-five miles from Marble. This rail link could be used to ship marble out of the Crystal River valley. Access to railways made it considerably easier to get the marble to market, but it was still not easy or cost effective enough for the quarries to do any substantial business. Nevertheless, the town of Marble grew to about 150 people, got a post office, and merged with nearby Clarence in 1892.

In 1895 the Yule Creek quarries in Marble were awarded the contract to supply 140,000 square feet of marble for the floors of the new Capitol Building in Denver. The high quality of the marble and the fact that it was local stone helped the quarries get the contract. This was the first time any of the quarries in Marble went into full-fledged operation, but they still had a transportation problem. The state helped build a new road from the quarries to Marble. From there, wagons carried the stone to Carbondale’s railroads. In 1897 the quarries shipped about $100,000 in marble to Denver for the Capitol’s interior.

Despite the success of the Capitol Building project, the marble quarries did not immediately enjoy a period of prosperity. Most people continued to focus on precious metals in the area, and transporting the heavy stone was still expensive. The Crystal River Railroad Company incorporated in 1898 and made plans for a railroad from Carbondale to Marble, but the project was abandoned because of difficulties with the terrain and the weather.

The Colorado Yule Marble Co.

Demand for marble went up after 1903, when a large fire in New Jersey showed that marble withstood intense heat better than granite. Suddenly, people wanted to line their floors, walls, and vaults with marble. The turning point in Marble’s history came in 1905, when the former president of the Colorado Coal and Iron Company, Channing F. Meek, came to town. He brought the capital and transportation infrastructure that allowed the town to boom.

Meek bought large tracts of land in and around Marble and merged several small marble companies into the Colorado Yule Marble Company. He spent $3 million developing quarries and built the Crystal River and San Juan Railroad, which reached Marble in November 1906. He also built the world’s largest marble-finishing mill. Other marble companies continued to exist in the area, but Meek’s Colorado Yule Marble Company was the dominant marble business in the Crystal River valley.

By the summer of 1907, Marble had a new railroad, marble mill, and power plant. But the Colorado Yule Marble Company still had not secured a major contract. It sent out thousands of small samples to advertise the area’s marble. Finally, in October, the company won a $500,000 contract to supply marble for the Cuyahoga County Courthouse in Cleveland, Ohio. That large contract and several smaller ones were enough to get the quarry into full operation and even required an expansion of the new mill. By the end of the year, more than 700 people had arrived to work in Marble.

In 1908 the Colorado Yule Marble Company received another big contract for an Ohio county courthouse, this time in Mahoning County, and had to expand the mill again. Soon the plant had 900 workers. The company built fifty new four-room homes to ease the town’s housing shortage, installed a telephone system, and began to supply electricity to the town.

Five hundred Colorado Yule workers, who were mostly Italian, went on strike in 1909 for higher wages. All across the country, American Federation of Labor workers supported the strike by refusing to handle Colorado Yule marble. After three months, the strike ended badly for the Colorado Yule workers, who returned to work with a pay cut. The company continued to increase production after the strike. It received more large contracts, including the Denver Post Office and the Montana State Capitol in 1910.

The mill had to be expanded yet again, and a new electric tram was constructed to connect the mill buildings. By the early 1910s, the large mill complex on the south side of Marble covered about 100,000 square feet. It included four connected shop buildings, two mills, and a large stone yard. It could process 40,000 cubic feet of marble per month. Colorado ranked third in the country in marble production, behind only Vermont and Georgia.

Major Projects, Major Problems

In the 1910s, Colorado Yule was awarded its largest and most prestigious projects, yet it also suffered large setbacks. An avalanche hit the mill on March 20, 1912. No one died, but the mill was severely damaged. The mill was operating again by the summer and the company built a huge avalanche wall of marble waste to protect the mill complex. Then, in August 1912, Meek was injured in an accident on the complex’s electric tramway. He died two days later.

Mortimer Matthews took over as the company’s interim president. He was able to get a $1.8 million loan to improve the marble works. He landed a $1 million contract to supply 1.2 million square feet of marble for the interior of the Equitable Building in New York. This was the largest marble contract ever at the time.

The company’s eastern representative, J. F. Manning, was soon named permanent president. He had many personal contacts in Washington, DC, where the Lincoln Memorial Commission was searching for the right marble to use for the structure. The memorial’s designer, Henry Bacon, wanted the whitest, soundest marble available. Manning convinced the commission to send a representative to inspect the stone at Marble. Bacon judged Colorado Yule marble “immeasurably superior” to the others being considered.

Colorado Yule marble was officially awarded the contract for the Lincoln Memorial in March 1914. The memorial had very strict requirements for its stone; only 10 percent of the marble quarried for the project was shipped to Washington. The company had 1,000 people working on the project at once with labor costs of up to $95,000 per month. They were able to fulfill the contract by June 1916, a few months ahead of schedule.

Despite the two huge contracts in New York and Washington, the company was dangerously overextended because of the loans it had taken out to expand its plant. When World War I began, the company’s many Italian workers went home to fight in the war, and the prospect of American entry into the war dried up demand for marble. In July 1916, just a month after completing the Lincoln Memorial contract, the company could no longer make payments on its bonds and went bankrupt. Shareholders filed suit, the company was placed in receivership, and the payroll shrank to only 200 workers by September.

A series of natural disasters dealt the death blow to the struggling company. A fire tore through town in 1916. Then, a flood washed out parts of the railroad tracks in 1917. The railroad to stopped service to Marble. Over the next year, Marble experienced an exodus of workers and residents. In January 1918, the company was put up for auction because it had not been able to pay its property taxes. Manning successfully assembled a bid with the Colorado National Bank to retain control of the company, but it was foreclosed on in July 1919 and put up for auction again that September.

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Marble was nearly a ghost town in 1920, but demand for marble was growing again after the war. The railroad was repaired, workers returned, and shipments of marble resumed. By 1924 two companies merged to create the Consolidated Yule Marble Company, and there were 200 men on the payroll.

But natural disasters continued to bedevil the company. A fire ripped through the mill on April 22, 1925, destroying more than half of the mill. The mill was insured for less than half of the damage, so the company could not afford to rebuild in full. In December 1927, Jacob Smith of Buffalo, New York, bought the company for $1 million. He operated it as the Yule-Colorado Marble Company, but business was slow. He sold out to the Vermont Marble Company not long before the stock market crash in 1929.

In 1930 the Yule-Colorado Marble Company secured its most prestigious project—the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. The company was chosen because it had the only quarry capable of cutting a single block of marble large enough for the proposed design. Workers spent more than a year cutting a 124-ton block of marble, the largest ever quarried at the time. That block was cut down to fifty-six tons and shipped to Vermont. There, the marble was finished before being installed at Arlington on November 11, 1932.

End of the Marble Mill

The company continued to quarry stone in the late 1930s, completing projects for several large state and federal buildings in Denver. Costs continued to climb while the demand for marble declined. The last block of marble came down from the quarry on October 25, 1941, and the mill shut down on November 15. Morse Brothers Machinery Company of Denver bought the marble mill’s machinery and immediately scrapped it. The railroad tracks to Marble were torn out in 1943, the same year the Marble post office closed.

No large-scale quarrying took place in Marble for decades after World War II. The use of marble declined after the war with the rise of cheap marble-veneer substitutes and modernist steel-and-glass skyscrapers. Colorado marble, in particular, suffered from being far from the major East Coast markets, where it had been used only when quality rather than cost was the primary consideration. In 1953 the Basic Chemical Company bought mineral rights around Marble and planned to sell ground marble. But high transportation costs caused the company to shut down its operation after only a year.

Marble never became a true ghost town, however, and always retained at least a handful of year-round residents. An Outward Bound school opened near Marble in 1962. The old Colorado Yule marble quarry reopened in 1988, when a small operation leased the quarry from the Vermont Marble Company. The quarry has operated on and off since then.

Recent History

In December 2011, the Italian company RED Graniti of Carrara bought the quarry, and sold it to Colorado Stone Quarries in 2014. In 2014 the company employed forty people and produced more than 1,000 metric tons of marketable marble per month.

Weeds have overtaken the old Colorado Yule marble mill site since it was scrapped in 1941, but some surface artifacts and abandoned marble stock remain. The original Oil House still stands and is owned by the town of Marble. The only other remaining mill building is the Document Storage Vault, which stored blueprints and project plans.

The town of Marble has about eighty full-time residents, a population that swells to 170 in summer. The town sees about 5,000 visitors each year; some come for the annual Marble/marble Symposium, which has been running for more than twenty years and usually draws three or four dozen sculptors.

The beautiful, high quality marble in the Crystal River valley is the only source of the stone in Colorado. Quarries in the area were developed by the Colorado Yule Marble Company. A vast marble mill operated from 1907 to 1941. The quarries supplied marble for many famous monuments and buildings, including the Lincoln Memorial, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the Capitol Building in Denver.

Geologic History

The marble deposits near the town of Marble began as dense black limestone that formed during the Paleozoic Era (542 million years ago – 251 million years ago). At that time, a shallow sea covered central Colorado. Roughly 200 million years later, the Rocky Mountains uplifted. Magma rose to the crust and heated the limestone around the current town of Marble. The heat killed the organic matter and cause metamorphosis. The result was pure white marble. When the magma cooled, it crystallized into granite around the marble.

Early Quarries and Quandaries

Geologists and prospectors noted the marble deposits in the 1870s and 1880s. They were interested in precious metals, so they did not try to quarry the marble. Gold and silver miners in the area reported that the roofs of their mines were made of fine white marble.

The towns of Marble and Clarence were established in 1881. The first marble quarry in the Crystal River valley was established in 1884. Many businesses tried and failed to develop quarries around Marble. There was not enough money to get a mill up and running, and there were no roads to get the marble out of the valley.

By 1888 both the Colorado Midland and the Denver & Rio Grande Railroads had reached Carbondale, about twenty-five miles from Marble. Railroads made it easier to get the marble to market, but there simply wasn’t enough demand for marble. Still, the town of Marble grew to about 150 people. It got a post office and merged with nearby Clarence in 1892.

In 1895 the Yule Creek quarries in Marble were awarded the contract to supply marble for the floors of the new Capitol Building in Denver. This was the first time a quarry in Marble had gone into full-fledged operation. The state helped build a new wagon road from the quarries to Marble. From there, wagons carried the marble to Carbondale’s rail lines. In 1897 the quarries shipped about $100,000 in marble to Denver for the Capitol’s interior.

Despite the success of the capitol building project, the marble quarries were still not successful businesses. People continued to focus on mining the gold and silver in the area. The Crystal River Railroad Company made plans for a railroad from Carbondale to Marble, but difficult terrain and bad weather stopped the project.

Colorado Yule Marble Company

Demand for marble went up after 1903. A large fire in New Jersey showed that marble withstood intense heat that destroyed granite. Suddenly, people wanted to line their floors, walls, and vaults with marble.

The turning point in Marble’s history came in 1905. Channing F. Meek started a business in the area. He brought the capital and transportation infrastructure that allowed the town to boom. Meek bought large tracts of land around Marble and created the Colorado Yule Marble Company. He spent $3 million developing quarries. He built the Crystal River and San Juan Railroad, which reached Marble in November 1906. He also constructed the world’s largest marble-finishing mill.

By the summer of 1907, Marble had a new railroad, mill, and power plant. But the Colorado Yule Marble Company still did not have much work. It sent out thousands of small samples to advertise the area’s marble. Finally, in October, the company won a major contract. It would supply marble for a courthouse in Cleveland, Ohio. That contract was enough to put the quarry into full operation. It even required an expansion of the new mill. By the end of the year, more than 700 people had arrived to work in Marble.

In 1908 the Colorado Yule Marble Company received another big contract for an Ohio county courthouse. The mill needed to be expanded again. Soon the plant had 900 workers. The company built fifty new four-room homes for the workers, installed a telephone system, and began to supply electricity to the town.

Five hundred Colorado Yule workers, mostly Italian, went on strike for higher wages in 1909. All across the country, union members supported the strike. They refused to handle Colorado Yule marble. After three months, the strike ended badly for the Colorado Yule workers, who returned to work with a pay cut.

After the strike, the company received more large contracts. These included the Denver Post Office and the Montana State Capitol in 1910. The mill had to be expanded again with a new electric tram to connect the mill buildings. By the early 1910s, the large mill complex at Marble covered about 100,000 square feet. It included four shop buildings, two mills, and a large stone yard. It could process 40,000 cubic feet of marble per month. Colorado ranked third in the country in marble production, behind only Vermont and Georgia.

Major Projects, Major Problems

In the 1910s Colorado Yule was awarded large and important projects, but it also suffered huge setbacks. A large avalanche hit the mill on March 20, 1912. No one died, but the mill was severely damaged. The mill was operating again by the summer. The company had to build an avalanche wall of marble waste to protect the mill complex.

Then, Channing Meek was injured in an accident at the mill and died two days later. Mortimer Matthews took over as the company’s interim president. He immediately improved the safety of the marble works and landed a $1 million contract to supply 1.2 million square feet of marble for the Equitable Building in New York City. This was the largest marble contract ever at the time.

J. F. Manning was named as the permanent president of the company. He had personal contacts in Washington, DC, where the Lincoln Memorial Commission was searching for marble to use in the memorial. They wanted the whitest, soundest marble available. The commission sent a representative to inspect the stone at Marble. Colorado Yule marble was judged “immeasurably superior” to the others being considered, and the commission decided to use it.

The company was awarded the contract in March 1914. The Lincoln Memorial had very strict requirements for its stone. Only 10 percent of the marble quarried for the project was shipped to Washington. The company had 1,000 people working on the project, and was able to fulfill the contract by June 1916, a few months ahead of schedule.

The Equitable Building and the Lincoln Memorial were two huge contracts. But despite this, the company was in debt because of the loans it had taken out. When World War I began, the company’s many Italian workers went home to fight in the war. In July 1916, just a month after completing the Lincoln Memorial, the company could no longer make payments on its bonds. The company went bankrupt and had only 200 workers by September.

A series of natural disasters dealt the death blow to the struggling company. A fire tore through town in 1916. Then, a flood washed out parts of the railroad tracks in 1917. The railroad stopped service to Marble. Over the next year, workers and residents left Marble. In January 1918, the company was put up for auction because it had not been able to pay its property taxes.

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Marble was nearly a ghost town in 1920, even though demand for marble was growing again after the war. The railroad was repaired, workers returned, and shipments of marble resumed. By 1924, there were 200 men on the payroll.

But natural disasters continued to cause problems for the company. A fire ripped through the mill on April 22, 1925, destroying more than half of the mill. The mill was insured for less than half of the damage, so the company could not afford to rebuild in full. In December 1927, Jacob Smith of Buffalo, New York, bought the company for $1 million. He operated it as the Yule-Colorado Marble Company, but business was slow. He sold it to the Vermont Marble Company not long before the stock market crash in 1929.

In 1930 the Yule-Colorado Marble Company secured its most prestigious project—the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, DC. The company was chosen because it had the only quarry capable of cutting a single block of marble large enough for the proposed design. Workers spent more than a year cutting a 124-ton block of marble. It was the largest block that had ever been quarried. It was shipped to Vermont, where it was finished. The block was installed at Arlington on November 11, 1932.

End of the Marble Mill

The company continued to quarry stone into the late 1930s. It completed projects for several state and federal buildings in Denver. But costs continued to climb while the demand for marble declined. The last block of marble came down from the quarry on October 25, 1941. The mill shut down on November 15. Morse Brothers Machinery Company of Denver bought the marble mill’s machinery, broke it down, and sold the parts. The railroad tracks to Marble were torn out in 1943.

No large-scale quarrying took place in Marble for decades. The use of marble declined after the World War II. Builders of modern steel and glass skyscrapers did not use marble in their buildings. In 1953 the Basic Chemical Company bought mineral rights around Marble. It planned to sell “ground” marble, but the company shut down its operation after only a year.

Marble was basically abandoned thereafter. It never became a true ghost town, as it always retained a handful of year-round residents. An Outward Bound school opened near Marble in 1962. The old Colorado Yule marble quarry reopened in 1988. A small company leased the quarry from the Vermont Marble Company. The quarry has operated on and off since then.

Recent History

In December 2011, the Italian company RED Graniti of Carrara bought the quarry. They sold it to Colorado Stone Quarries in 2014. In 2014 forty people were employed at the quarry, which produces more than 1,000 metric tons of marble per month.

Weeds have grown over the old Colorado Yule marble mill site since the mill was scrapped in 1941. Part of the old plant and some marble rock remain. The original Oil House still stands and is owned by the town of Marble. Today the town has about 80 full-time residents, a population that grows to 170 in summer. Marble sees around 5,000 visitors per year.

Marble is a kind of beautiful, sparkling white stone. The Crystal River valley is the only source of marble in Colorado. Marble from Colorado was used for monuments and buildings. The Lincoln Memorial, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the Colorado Capitol in Denver used marble from the Marble Mill site.

Geologic History

The marble deposits began as dense black limestone. This limestone was formed during the Paleozoic Era, 500 million years ago. At that time, a shallow sea covered Colorado. Then, 200 million years later, the Rocky Mountains uplifted. Magma rose to the crust. It heated the limestone around the current town of Marble. The heat caused the limestone to change. The result was beautiful, white, sparkling marble.

Early Quarries

The town of Marble began in 1881. The first marble quarry in the Crystal River valley began in 1884. A quarry is an open pit mine. Many people tried and failed to start quarries around Marble. It cost a lot of money to build a marble mill. It was hard to move the heavy marble out of the valley.

By 1888, a railroad had reached the nearby town. Railroads made it easier to get the marble to buyers, but it was hard to get much business. Still, the town of Marble grew to about 150 people.

In 1895 the quarry got a big job. They were hired to help build the new Colorado Capitol in Denver. All the floors in the building were made of marble. A road was built from the quarries to Marble. From there, wagons carried the marble to trains. More than $100,000 in marble went to Denver for the Capitol floors.

Colorado Yule Marble Co.

In 1905 Channing F. Meek started the Colorado Yule Marble Company. He had money to make the business successful. He spent millions developing quarries. He brought railroads all the way to Marble. He constructed the world’s largest marble-finishing mill.

By the summer of 1907, Marble had a new railroad, marble mill, and power plant. But the Colorado Yule Marble Company still did not have much work. It sent out thousands of small samples to advertise its marble. Finally, in October, the company got a big job. They would supply marble for a courthouse in Cleveland, Ohio. The mill needed to expand. By the end of the year, they had more than 700 workers.

In 1908 the Colorado Yule Marble Company got a job for another Ohio courthouse. The mill needed to be expanded again. Soon the plant had 900 workers. The company built homes for the workers. It put telephones and electricity in the town.

The company received more large contracts. These included the Denver Post Office and the Montana State Capitol in 1910. The mill needed to be expanded again. It had four shop buildings, two mills, and a large stone yard. A new electric tram connected the buildings. Then, the company got the job to provide marble for the Equitable Building in New York City. This was the largest marble contract ever at the time.

Major Projects, Major Problems

An avalanche damaged the mill on March 20, 1912. The mill was operating again by the summer. The company had to build an avalanche wall. Then, Channing Meek was injured in an accident at the mill. He died two days later.

J. F. Manning was named as president. He knew people in Washington, DC, where the Lincoln Memorial was being planned. The planners were searching for the whitest marble in the United States. The Commission inspected the stone at Marble. The Colorado Yule marble was judged “much superior” to the others being considered.

Colorado Yule marble was chosen for parts of the Lincoln Memorial. The company hired 1,000 people to work on the project. They finished the job in June 1916, a few months ahead of schedule.

The Equitable Building and the Lincoln Memorial were two huge jobs. But the company had loans it could not pay back. When World War I began, the company could not pay its bills. Just a month after finishing the Lincoln Memorial, the company went broke. It had only 200 workers by September.

A fire tore through the town of Marble in 1916. Then, a flood washed out the railroad tracks in 1917. People moved away from Marble. In January 1918, the company could not pay its taxes.

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Marble was almost a ghost town in 1920. But, builders started to buy marble again. The railroad was repaired. Workers returned and shipments of marble were sent out. By 1924, there were 200 workers at Marble.

In 1930 the Colorado Yule Marble Company got its most important project. It was for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, DC. It was the only quarry that could cut a block of marble large enough for the tomb’s design. Workers spent a year cutting a 124-ton block. It was the largest block that had ever been quarried. It was shipped to Vermont, where it was finished.

End of the Marble Mill

The company continued into the 1940s. It completed projects for buildings in Denver. But by that time, builders were using other materials in their buildings. The last block of marble came down from the quarry in 1941. A company bought the mill’s machines. They broke up the machines and sold the parts. The railroad tracks to Marble were torn out in 1943.

No marble was quarried for decades. The use of marble dropped off even more. Modern steel and glass skyscrapers did not use marble. The town of Marble was almost abandoned.

Recent History

The old Colorado Yule Marble quarry opened again in 1988. In 2014 forty people worked there. The old Colorado Yule marble mill has been covered with weeds. Parts of the old plant and some marble rock can still be seen. About eighty people live in the town of Marble now. The town gets 5,000 visitors per year. Some come to participate in statue carving classes and art shows.