Kankakee, IL: Limestone Quaries

The Daily-Journal has an article titled: "Kankakee's quarries: The 'hole' story."

The quarries moved west of town.

Daily-Journal, Kankakee County Museum Photo Archive, one of six historical photos in the article
"This kiln at the south end of the Bird Quarry (now Bird Park) used heat to convert limestone into building lime, a component of mortar, cement, and plaster. The photo was taken from the quarry floor, looking to the southeast, in about 1900. The telephone poles in the background were along Station Street." Jack Klasey
[So what is now a paddle-boat pond was the hole of a quarry. The article says this former-quarry is also used for fishing and scuba diving.]

Quarry operations started in the 1850s. Most of the rock was crushed for ballast or other construction activities such as the above building lime operation. But some quarries had rock of enough quality that it could be cut unto blocks and used for cut-stone construction such as bridge piers, abutments and buildings. "Stone for two downtown churches built in the 1860s, First Baptist (now Wildwood Church of the Nazarene) and First Methodist (now Asbury), came from Davis Woodward's quarry just south of the mouth of Soldier Creek." [Daily-Journal]

The far pier of the Big Four Bridge is still the original cut-stone pier. If you look at the two historical pictures near the bottom of the NYC Bridges, the piers are clearly cut-stone. And zooming in on some of the piers, you can clearly see that some of the piers are still cut-stone. The existing bridge has a concrete extension on top of the cut-stone part because the bridge was rebuilt from a deck truss design to a steel girder design.

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This lake is a quarry that was abandoned on July 9, 1915 when a swollen Soldier Creek broke through a levee and filled the 100-foot-deep hole of the McLaughlin-Mateer Quarry.