Colorado State Rock – Yule Marble

As is the case for many of Colorado’s state emblems, a group of school aged children and their teacher(s) are responsible for the selection of an item to become representative of our beautiful state. In the instance of the official Colorado State Rock, Junior Girl Scout Troop 357 of Lakewood, and a former troop leader, Claire Marshall did the petitioning to the State Legislature to have Yule Marble designated. Mrs. Marshall, who is a staff member of the Colorado School of Mines’ Department of Geology and Geological Engineering, noticed something interesting while designing a new exhibit. The Colorado State Gemstone, Aquamarine was blue and the Colorado State Mineral, Rhodochrosite is red. That started her thinking about the addition of a white stone, so the red, white and blue colors could well represent the Centennial State of Colorado. The troop was enthusiastic about trying to get the white marble into the official state category, and spent an extraordinary amount of time, energy and research before presenting their idea to two legislative committees.

Their hard work paid off, and on March 9, 2004, Yule Marble was adopted into law as Colorado’s State Rock. Governor Bill Owens approved the Yule Marble, which well represents a large part of our industrial history in Gunnison County. Because of its beauty and durability, this excellent stone was used in the Equitable Building skyscraper in New York City, and in the construction of the stairs and floors of the Colorado State Capitol Building which are made of Yule Marble. The stone was used in the construction of more than 30 buildings in Colorado and more than 100 additional buildings across the country. It was also used for national monuments such as the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial selected for the facing, columns and detailing at the urging of the architect, Henry Bacon. For the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier the only quarry that could provide a solid block of the dimensions required was Yule Marble. The 56-ton block was the largest single piece of marble ever quarried at that time.

As far back as 1880 along Yule Creek, the marble deposit was found, but it wasn’t until 1905 that a quarry was set up to start producing the beautiful slabs of pure white marble. This particular type of marble has 99.5% pure calcite grains which are tightly compressed together, producing a luminous quality. It is one of the purest marbles ever quarried. The Colorado Yule Marble Quarry was started with financing from the Rockefellers, and a fund raising effort from Col. Channing Meek, who described the marble deposit as “gigantic, remarkable, flawless and immense.”

As marble was taken from the steep mountainside, a fabricating mill was put in place in the new town of Marble, Colorado. The marble mill soon became the largest in the world, but was completely destroyed in an avalanche on March 20, 1912. It took months to put the mill back in working order, and a chain of events made profitability very difficult for the quarry. In 1916 the marble stones were sold to build the Lincoln Memorial. It wasn’t until 1931 that the Yule quarry provided the stone used for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. By 1941 the operation was closed down, and the town of Marble started a decline which left it almost a ghost town. Finally In 1990, the Yule Marble Quarry was reopened and is currently owned and operated by a Quebec based corporation named Polycor. Because of the dangerous nature of mining the world class white marble stone – being an underground operation as well as Federal regulations prohibiting access- there are no tours of the quarry. Although there is NO access to the quarry for the public, you can still see some of the slabs and blocks of marble dumped near the site, which are either fractured, or unmarketable for some reason. If you are interested in purchasing scrap stone, you may call Kimberley Perrin at 970-704-9002.