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Bloomingpedia:This month's featured article/2008 Month 10
The quarrying of Limestone has been one of the major industries of south-central Indiana since the arrival of the railroads made transportation of the heavy rock economically feasible. It has a very uniform texture and grade and is a freestone, a stone that does not tend to cut or split along any specific line. This makes it very easy to cut and carve.
The stone tends to be gray or buff in color, or patterns of both. Primarily formed of calcium carbonate, it was deposited over millions of years as marine fossils decomposed at the bottom of a shallow inland sea which covered most of the present-day Midwestern United States during the Mississippian Period.
An outcrop of Salem Limestone runs from Stinesville through Bloomington and on down to Bedford, where the outcrop is nearly ten miles wide.
