A Quarry Story

by Fayeruz Regan 04.2021

Quarries sometimes hold secrets, so you’ve got to dig deep. Particularly if those quarries were once filled with water. That’s certainly the case with the three quarries that once operated on the land that became Joseph Bryan Park.  

Bryan Park straddles the Fall Line, and the granite found there was instrumental in building the roads in Richmond’s early Northside developments. 

Around the turn of the last century, industrialist Major Lewis Ginter quarried the dense Petersburg granite found between Jordan’s Branch and Upham Brook on land that would eventually become the northwest perimeter of Bryan Park. Stonecutters transformed the granite into Belgian blocks and curbstones that would pave and line the roads in many of Northside’s early developments. 

Back in 1892, Ginter built a narrow-gage railroad system for the express purpose of hauling granite from his quarries at Young’s Pond to his numerous construction projects peppering the Northside He even purchased his own locomotive and named her Barbara. The occasional lucky kid would be able to hop onto Barbara for an afternoon tour of these firfir growing city.  

Quarries frequently fill with water when underground springs are inadvertently tapped. Such was the case with the quarries at Bryan Park.  Once filled with water, the quarries became popular swimming holes. According to a Richmond Times-Dispatch, the first drowning occurred in one of the Park’s quarries in 1932. Nelsie Clark, a 27 year-old mother of three, apparently stepped off a granite ledge into deeper water and sank like a stone. There would be other deaths in the coming years. 

As late as 1944, on Independence Day, 16 year-old Eldridge Anderson drowned at the site. It took twelve days for his corpse to surface.  

More than corpses ended up in the water-filled quarries. Over the years, numerous cars had been driven into the quarries, whether stolen by teenagers for a joyride, or simply dumped there under mysterious circumstances. 

The isolated location of the quarries also seemed to invite crime. On June 6, 1951, a mother and daughter, seeking shelter from a rainstorm, accepted a ride from a motorist near the somewhat secluded quarries only to be robbed and sexually assaulted. They were treated at MCV for bruises and lacerations, and the mother was later admitted to a hospital for shock. 

In article from 1940, Ms. A. T. Smith, who lived in one the few houses adjacent the quarries, said it was not unusual to hear men and women screaming, or shots being fired around the quarries at night. "In fact, it would be quite unusual if everything remained quiet," she said. 

Authorities had been pressuring the owners to close the quarries, and use the land as a dumping site. Home Beneficial Life Insurance (the owners at the time) refused, citing “commercial possibilities.”  

Then on the evening of June 14th, 1940, Leroy McGruder and Lola Marie Strite, both 22, decided to go skinny-dipping at the middle quarry. Her clothes were found neatly folded beside the water, and his car was found parked nearby. Roads were blocked for the nearly week-long search, but it didn’t stop more than 500 onlookers from coming. Due to dangerous mining equipment and tangled cables at the bottom of the quarry, divers couldn’t retrieve the bodies. Finally, the quarry was drained and the bodies recovered.  

That July it was announced that the quarries would officially close, and that trespassers would be prosecuted to “the full extent of the law.” Signs and gates went up, but the kids kept coming. 

By the 1950s all three quarries had been filled. About the only evidence of their existence today are angular chunks of granite riprap just outside the western perimeter of the Park in the small residential enclave known as Shirley subdivision just off Byrdhill Road. 

The three quarries were demolished more than fifty years ago. “When I-64 was being built (late 60s early 70s) blasting and construction for the ramp from I-95 South heading south and west to I-64 obliterated the quarries, due to the ‘cut and fill’ approach to highway planning,” according to John Zeugner with Friends of Bryan Park.