First Quarries Come and Go: 1884 To 1905
The local miners never had the capital to develop marble quarries and in the 1890s they started selling marble claims:
- Colorado Marble and Mining was formed in 1891, by Steven Keene with capital stock of $1,000,000. In 1909 the lease was transferred to Monarch Marble, in 1921 to Colorado White Marble Company (by the Morman Church of Missouri) and out of business in 1926. Attempted to restart in 1937 but were unable to so.
- Crystal Land and Development was formed in 1892, by John C. Osgood and started quarrying the same year with an open-pit quarry on west side of Yule Creek. Osgood was also the president of Colorado Fuel and Iron, with major coal and coke operations in Redstone, Colorado, 12 miles (19 km) from the town of Marble. In the late 1890s, he formed Yule Creek White Marble Company, then reorganized in 1905 as Redstone Marble. The reorganization did not result in any quarrying and the company was out of business on 5 September 1917.
- Marble City Quarry Company was formed on 29 September 1893, by Dr. R.H. Kline. The marble deposit was sold to Channing Meek, 28 February 1905 and the company was dissolved.
- Crystal River Marble Company was formed on 12 April 1904, by the Strauss brothers. The quarry was on the east side of Yule Creek inside Treasure Mountain. In support of their operation they completed the Treasury Mountain Railway in August 1910. They had little marble production with no major contracts and were bankrupt in 1917.
Though better financed, the new companies had little success in spite of growing interest in Yule Marble generated by glowing test results from London (1887), the St Louis Exposition (1890) and the Chicago Exposition (1893). The companies had different degrees of development and success with the quarry of John Osgood obtaining a major contract in 1895 to supply 140,000 square feet (13,000 m2) of marble for the new state capitol in Denver, Colorado. After this initial success, little production has accomplished by Osgood or the other two companies. The Osgood operation was well financed but even he was afflicted by the problems associated with developing and operating a quarry in the Yule Creek Valley. Also the lack of transportation to move enough of the stone out of Marble added to the difficulties. Taken together, these factors resulted in high operating costs that could not be covered by marble revenue. The high cost problems would also affect the next quarry and its operators up to the present time.
In 1905, another major transfer of leases took place with acquisitions by the newly formed Colorado-Yule Marble Company (CYMC). First was Channing Meek purchasing the marble deposits of the Marble City Quarry Company on 28 February 1905. He in turn sold the deposits to the newly formed CYMC on 11 April 1905 and subsequently became the CYMC president. The marble deposit that became the quarry of the CYMC was acquired on 14 November 1905 from Osgood. (Osgood never quarried the marble because of financial problems.) Because the three remaining quarries had no more production to speak of this leaves only the quarry started by the CYMC in 1905.
Read more about this topic: Yule Marble