Ruins of the engine house and loading bins in Fiborn quarry, near Trout Lake, Michigan, Spring of 2002. There was still snow to be found in the corners of the woods. This picture was taken from the rim, looking down into the quarry. If I remember right from pacing it off, the building to the right, the engine house (so called because it was built and used to house and repair steam locomotives) was something like 35 feet wide and 85 feet long. It is tall enough to make a two story building. I add this for some idea of scale; it is open inside. All but a two or three sheets of the sheet metal roof were still intact as of this picture.
There are two structures to the left. Prominently shadowed and up against the edge of the pit to the left is something that was apparently just a combination berm and structure to hold up the bridge that ran out to the loading bins. You can see the remains of the lower structure of the bins immediately to the right, though they show paler here, and are also behind some brush.
Apparently, rail cars and/or dump trucks hauled the limestone from the quarry bed up around to the top, then out across to the top of the loading bins. Rail cars entered the quarry bowl and stone was dumped from the bins down into the cars. Most of the stone then was taken to Sault Sainte Marie in either Canada or Michigan over the years when the quarry was still operating.
While the history is interesting, of equal and related import is that this site once had one of the larger cave systems in Michigan. These caves were almost entirely mined away for the limestone, but two sinkholes remain in the quarry floor, where small streams run in from the edges and then simply vanish into holes. They go underground for a few miles or something to dump into the nearby Hendrie river, if I remember correctly.
For more information about this. Google for "Michigan Karst Conservancy" They are the organization which owns the site now.
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