Quarry

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Crushed limestone quarry near Bellefonte, Pennsylvania

A quarry is a type of open-pit mine from which rock or minerals are extracted. Quarries are generally used for extracting building materials, such as dimension stone. Quarries are usually shallower than other types of open-pit mines.

Types of rock extracted from quarries include:

• Cinder
• Chalk
• China Clay
• Clay
• Coal
• Coquina
• Construction aggregate (sand and gravel)
• Granite
• Gritstone
• Gypsum
• Limestone
• Marble
• Ores
• Phosphate rock
• Sandstone
• Slate

Quarries in level areas often have special engineering problems for drainage. The Coquina Quarry is excavated to more than sixty feet (18 meters) below sea level. To reduce surface leakage, a moat lined with clay was constructed around the entire quarry. Ground water that seeps into the pit is pumped up into the moat.

Many quarries fill with water after abandonment for mining purposes to become lakes. Others become landfills.

[edit] Gallery

Construction aggregate quarry near Adelaide, South Australia	Coquina Quarry sixty feet below sea level, Conway, South Carolina	A dimension stone quarry.	A small cinder quarry.
An abandoned limestone quarry.	Portland Stone quarry on the Isle of Portland, England.	Basalt quarry on the Holyoke Range of Massachusetts.	Crabtree Quarry in Raleigh, North Carolina.

[edit] See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Quarries

• Clay pit
• Collecting fossils
• Gravel pit
• Kouloura
• List of minerals
• List of rock types
• List of stones
• Miner
• Mountaintop removal mining

[edit] External links

• See How Rock Is Quarried
• Stone Quarries and Beyond: Quarries - Quarry Workers - Stone Cutters & Stone Carvers - Historical Dealers of Stone & the Finished Products

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