Gantt's Quarry Observation Point

Look out over this pit and you are looking at the longest deposit of marble in the world. The bed of white stone runs roughly thirty-two miles long, a mile and a half wide, and roughly four hundred feet deep. The story began around eighteen fourteen, when a traveling physician named Edward Gantt, riding through with General Andrew Jackson, spotted the gleaming marble.

He opened the first quarry here in eighteen thirty-four, and the first stone sold a few years later for tombstones and monuments. Sylacauga marble went on to become national treasure. It was carved into the Lincoln statue in the United States Capitol, used in the Supreme Court building, and two blocks from this very quarry represent Alabama inside the Washington Monument.

The observation point opened in twenty twelve so visitors could watch the quarry that built monuments to a nation.