[xoxoxoBruce]

Some of the finest limestone in the United States - and possibly the world - can be found in the hills around the southern towns of Bloomington and Bedford, and in the previous century stonecutters turned extracting it into a science, and shaping it into an art.
The stone was in such demand that a massive industry cropped up around it, and hundreds of thousands of tons of mammoth stone slabs were carved out of the ground and shipped around the country. A shocking number of iconic American structures are made out of Indiana limestone, including the Empire State Building, the Washington National Cathedral, the Pentagon, and 35 of the 50 current state capitol buildings.

Unfortunately, in the second half of the 20th century, stone masonry fell out of favor as preferences shifted to glass-and-metal skyscrapers that were cheaper to build and maintain. This dissolution of the limestone industry left many southern Indiana towns impoverished, as they are to this day. Their plight was fictionalized in the 1979 Dennis Quaid film “Breaking Away.” Now all that remains of many of the limestone quarries are massive, eerie rectangles etched out of the earth and speckling the otherwise pastoral countryside.

The most famous of these quarries is the Empire Quarry, which provided the 18,630 tons of stone needed to construct the Empire State Building. The quarry is so long and so deep, one can imagine the entire Empire State Building lying within it, refilling the 207,000 cubic feet of empty space now left vacant.

It's a shame how technology has left some communities and resources behind. But that's what they call progress.