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The Rock Quarry on the Patoka River

All of you by now know of my interest in the Patoka River. I mentioned the dramatic change that occurred more than a thousand years ago, which carved out a riverbed from the hills in the Severns Bridge area; this left some large rock formations exposed. Most everyone knows where Bammer Hill is located and Highway 65 runs over the top of this hill. On the backside or Patoka River side of this hill is an old rock quarry, this rock quarry was once owned by my Grandpa Joe Kolb.

I’ve mentioned that my brothers, cousins and I enjoyed exploring the Patoka River on Sunday afternoons or other times when we could get out of farm work. The rock quarry was quite a distance down river from our homes, but we often got there because time goes fast when you are with friends and having fun. We would climb up to the quarry to look around at the area where the blasting and cutting took place and would imaging what it was like in those days. The view of the Patoka River from high above was really something, it was nearly straight down to the river and then the flood plain on the other side was all farm ground until the hills of what we called Uncle Jim Dunlap’s place, Joe Howard Kolb lives there now. I never thought about how and why the geography and geology were like they were at that time.

My Grandpa Kolb bought the rock quarry to build roads. He and his brother got a contract to build the road to Wheeling, probably now known as 400N. They quarried the sandstone from the rock quarry near Bammer Hill. My Dad said he and Uncle Chester were just old enough to drive a team and wagon from the quarry to the road building site while their older brothers, Wilbur, Leotis and Jacob were old enough to be of some help in the road building.

My guess is my grandfather wanted something for his boys and hired hands to do in the off-season to make money.

The idea of building the Wheeling Road was a good one except for one detail, the fine print. Road construction had gone on for a while with loads of stone hauled to the site and emptied and certain amount of arranging the stone to be covered with gravel. After a few days the Township Trustee arrived and ask Grandpa Kolb if he had read the fine print of his contract. Upon reading more carefully Grandpa discovered the stones had to be set on end and be fitted together. A crew was hired to chip the stones to the proper size and set them on end. Uncle Chester said they were the only people he knew of to scoot on their rear all the way to Wheeling. I don’t think Grandpa Kolb made any money on the road building. That was the only road he built and he traded the rock quarry property for some other farm ground.

I still remember walking barefoot on that road and stubbing my toe on those stones that protruded in the center of the road, which had been widened by the time I came along. The road is now blacktop and the stones are no longer visible It was an interesting part of the history of Washington Township and our family.