Bedrock close to the surface
When I&M Canal workers reached Lemont, their picks and shovels became nearly useless. Just under the surface, a layer of dolomite (a magnesium-rich limestone) meant they needed explosive back powder to dig the canal. This sedimentary rock dates from an inland sea that covered the region 400 million years ago. Buried in stone are fossils of sea creatures, such as extinct trilobites, that could roll themselves into a ball.

Used to build canal walls and locks, stone from Lemont, Lockport and Joliet soon became popular as a building material. Entrepreneurs saw the stone’s potential and quarrying became big business when the canal opened in 1848, providing inexpensive shipping. More than 50 quarries operated between Lemont and Joliet, employing thousands of immigrant workers.

Canal ships tons of stone
Chicago’s builders used the stone, called Lemont or Joliet Limestone, or Athens Marble for homes, churches, public buildings and even sidewalks. In 1855, I&M Canal boats carried almost 26,000 cubic yards of limestone, most of it to Chicago. That’s enough to cover an acre of ground to a depth of 15 feet. Demand skyrocketed after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and tons of stone were shipped on the I&M Canal. The Chicago Water Tower and portions of the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield are among the most famous local limestone buildings that survive today.

Labor History.
Quarry workers, like many American workers in the late nineteenth century, protested low pay and long hours in increasingly violent strikes. In 1882, Lemont workers walked out, but the strike failed. Three years later, Lemont and Joliet workers struck again, and their action resulted ina bloody fight known as “the Lemont Massacre.”

After a month, owners threatened to replace strikers with new workers, and some Joliet workers returned to the quarries. Angry strikers from Lemont turned on them. The state militia was called out, armed with machine guns. A large crowd of strikers and their wives waited in the streets to meet them, and refused to leave.

The militia charged into the crowd with bayonets, and the strikers met them with stones and clubs. Dozens of men and women were injured, and three died. The next day Albert Parsons, a noted labor activist from Chicago, arrived in Lemont to rally the workers. The strike failed, however, and the following year Parsons was tried and executed for conspiracy in Chicago’s Haymarket affair. Ultimately, unions were successful in securing better conditions for quarry workers, but by 1900 the industry began to decline and quarrying jobs were hard to find.

Decline of the building stone industry
By about 1920, workers in Lemont, Lockport and Joliet were no longer quarrying building stone. Architects and builders began to prefer more durable Bedford limestone from Indiana as well as new materials like concrete, which were less expensive. Today, area quarries supply only gravel and crushed stone.