There’s an interesting phenomenon whereby places named “The _______” develop characters that overshadow whatever “______” originally stood for. Sometimes the practical use remains constant, such as when “The Dump” is where you put your trash. The fun part happens when the place or function changes and the name doesn’t.
In my own childhood this place was “The Trailer.” It was just a couple minutes and a field away from my house. The Trailer was our picnicking ground, right on the banks of Chittenango Creek. I can just barely remember when there actually was a trailer there. My grandparents towed it there decades ago to hold dishes and towels and bathing suits—by the time I came around it was sagging into the dirt and threatening us with tetanus.
The mere removal of that trailer never had any impact on The Trailer. We could hardly give it a more accurate new label like “The Decomposing Lawn Chairs.” Over the years it’s become far more than a name for a patch of woods. The Trailer means minnow catching and bug bites and birthday parties and corn on the cob and the sensation of pulling a leech off your ankle.
One such place on Swan’s Island is The Quarry. Generations of kids have spent summers swimming in the quarry pond and winters skating on its frozen surface. It was a hugely popular hangout spot and still draws many swimmers. To see it now you’d almost think the pond was created for this purpose. It’s easy to forget that it’s really just a side effect of decades of industry and labor.
What we now know as The Quarry is in fact Baird’s Quarry, located in the Swan’s Island community of Minturn. The Matthew Baird Contracting Co. of New York opened the quarry in 1901, at which point it was one of two major commercial quarries on the island. The island also hosted small individual sites known as “motions” because they moved whenever their operator wanted to seek rock elsewhere.
After a few years Baird’s Quarry works grew to be 500 by 250 feet. The industry was supported by huge derricks, blacksmith shops and the boiler houses necessary to run the stream drills. If you walk the path above the quarry today you can see the boiler houses. If you scratch below the grass at the southeastern edge of the pond you can find the rusty remains of the blacksmith site.
A rail ran down the quarry hill to a wharf so that the cut stones could be easily loaded onto waiting barges. A small island called Ringbolt Ledge was part of this transport process. A pulley and cable were set in the ringbolt and used to tow vessels away from the wharf until they could safely raise sail and leave the harbor.
Baird’s Quarry granite is a coarse, pinkish bluff and was used primarily for paving stone in New York and Boston. Island quarrymen were expert stonecutters, capable of transforming the sheer rock face into perfect blocks. One islander, Fritz Johnson, was reported to be the fastest stonecutter of his time.
Just in case you’re interested in how the stuff got here, Swan’s Island’s rocks are part of the Avalon Terrane—the same as the eastern section of Newfoundland. This was crust accreted onto North America about 410 to 438 million years ago. Gosh!
Interestingly enough, we also owe our sandy beaches to the granite deposits. The pockets of sand are derived from the granite outcrops bordering them on either side. The sheltered coves allow for the deposition of the eroded granite sediments. If you happen to be a geologist with a handful of Swan’s Island sand you can see that it’s made up of little grains of quartz, feldspar, and biotite (apparently three of the major minerals that make up granite).
Granite quarrying impacted Swan’s Island in many ways, not least of which was supplying an influx of eligible bachelors. Several island families owe their origins to a stonecutter who traveled in seek of work. Men left their homes—even their countries—and somehow ended up on the Maine coast. They found wives and a decent life here and remained long after the quarry work dried up.
Axel Carlson was one such man. He was born in Hansbergson, Sweden and came to Swan’s Island around 1923. In 1926 he married an island girl, Bernice Turner, and settled in Minturn. His descendants still carry on his name there. The Martin and Johnson families also have granite at their roots.
Swan’s Island in the early 1900s was quite the happening place. These were the days of steamboats, sidewalks, restaurants and dance halls. Yes, having sidewalks seems like a big deal to us out here.
It took a lot of workers to make money out of rock, and a lot of work to keep those workers working. They needed food, housing and entertainment. Island women ran boarding houses and cooked for the men—a factor that promoted the aforementioned marriages.
The boom didn’t last, however. In the late 1920s the Depression began to slow down industry and by 1930 the quarry was closed. Older island residents remembered the steam whistle that signaled the start and stop of every workday. On the final day they just let the whistle blow until it ran out of steam. Some workers just walked off, leaving their tools on the hill.
Some of the quarry’s history resurfaced on July 7, 2003 when a group of islanders decided to drain the pond to improve the water quality. While the quarry was in operation, the pond was kept drained during the cutting season and allowed to fill up every winter. The 2003 draining revealed many exciting things: tools, old quarry pumps, items lost over the years by swimmers and a few unhappy eels.
My island job has been a lot like that of the folks who combed over that exposed rock bottom looking for treasures. You can find some fascinating history if you dig around a little—and I think it’s worth remembering the stories behind the names.
Kaitlin Webber is an Island Fellow on Swan’s Island throught AmeriCorps and the Island Institute. She works with the island’s historical society.